Beauty's Bagels
What the heck even is a Montreal bagel anyway?
Reviewing the notes section on my phone has revealed a number of local establishments that I’ve eaten at, photographed, and mentally reviewed, but have yet to put pen to paper and let the world know how I feel. One of those places is Beauty’s Bagels over on Telegraph Avenue.
Beauty’s has been around since 2009, founded by a Philadelphian émigré “in search of a new city to call home.” According to their website, “We fell in love immediately with the friendly people, beautiful landscape and amazing food. There was just one thing we found ourselves longing for (aside from warm summer nights): amazing bagels!”
I find this sentiment very relatable. And while Philadelphia isn’t technically a part of the Tri-state area aka the bagel homeland, it is close enough that they should know what they’re doing.
But do they? That, my friends, is the question at the heart of this week’s newsletter.
It was a Sunday morning back in May when I last ate at Beauty’s. Luckily, we journalists are copious note takers, and I remember the meal like it was yesterday. I was with my partner, who is Mexican, and their close friend, who is Ecuadorean. Their lack of cultural familiarity with bagels should provide a good foil to my East Coast purism. While I tend to gripe about the details, my compatriots may arguably be better suited to give an impartial assessment of how things taste, since they aren’t comparing it to some platonic ideal they remember from childhood.
I ordered my classic control sample, an everything bagel with cream cheese, not toasted, and a Diet Coke ($7). I’m ashamed to admit I have become pretty addicted to D.C. lately - I’m pretty sure they put something in there to make that happen. If you know a cure please let me know.
The bagel with cream cheese came out very fast, and they didn’t overdo it on the packaging, which I always appreciate. A waxed paper bag wins my heart every time. But my excitement was immediately tempered with disappointment when I discovered this bagel was not cut in half.
Longtime readers will know that refusing to cut a bagel sandwich in half is the absolute bane of my existence. IT TAKES TWO SECONDS! JUST CUT IT IN HALF. I’m sorry, but nobody wants to bite into the round end of a bagel. They just don’t. This is such a common mistake in California and I think I know why.
These East Coast people show up, crave bagels, and decide to open a shop. Great. But my theory is when training their staff, they simply forget to instruct the workers to cut the bagels in half. It’s just such a given on the East Coast that these bagel shop owners probably don’t even think they need to mention such a basic detail. But a native Californian can and will fuck up a bagel in every possible way if you give them a chance. So it’s imperative to give them very detailed instructions. Here at Beauty’s, it’s clear those instructions were not given.
So, how does it taste?
The answer is… tough. This might be the densest bagel I have ever eaten. We’re talking beef jerky level of chewiness. It was so dense that the cream cheese exploded out the sides like this.
This is not supposed to happen. Only a freshly toasted bagel, after warming the cream cheese to a more liquid form, should be able to accomplish such a feat. But this bagel was not toasted, it was just plain hard, like the streets of Oakland.
Oddly, it did taste quite fresh - it was not stale. The density came from somewhere else.
After complaining about this to my partner, I was informed that Beauty’s sells “Montreal bagels” which are supposed to be smaller and denser than New York bagels.
First of all, who in their right mind would prefer a bagel that’s smaller and tougher than average? Those do not seem like desirable qualities. Chewiness, yes. But the density of shoe leather? No thank you.
On that note, what even is a Montreal bagel? According to Wikipedia, it’s “smaller, thinner, sweeter and denser, with a larger hole, and is always baked in a wood-fired oven. It contains malt, egg, and no salt, and is boiled in honey-sweetened water before being baked.”
Interesting.
Either this place is run by a Philadelphian who chose to make bagels from a completely different part of the world than where they’re from (weird choice) OR they are trying to make New York bagels and doing it badly. Either way, the result is the same - not great.
There are, however, some redeeming qualities. The dough tasted very salty, which I really like. This goes against what we just learned from wiki, which says it’s supposed to be sweet not salty. Some incongruity there, but let’s keep moving.
The everything seasoning was very good - both well blended and liberally applied.
My partner ordered their personal favorite, lox on a salt and pepper bagel ($13). I have never before heard of a salt and pepper bagel, and it sounds pretty good on paper. But it turns out the salt and pepper go inside the dough, not on the outside like a topping, which is less exciting to me personally.
They ordered the closed-face option, which according to the menu, comes with 1.5oz of lox. After waiting about 10-15 minutes (aka way too long), this thing showed up looking like a hot mess.
Capers all skewed to the side, way too many red onions, and a pretty skimpy amount of lox for $13. A good portion of cream cheese, though.
Beauty’s also offers an open-faced option, which has double the amount of lox (3oz) for $15. Given the extreme chewiness factor of Beauty’s bagels, this option is definitely better enjoyed open-faced. Like so many things in the Bay Area, you don’t really win unless you pay extra. To me, $15 is way too much money to spend on breakfast, so it’s hard to call that winning. But the overall eating experience will likely be a better one.
The third person in our breakfast party ordered an egg sandwich which came with two eggs, Tilamook cheddar, spinach, and sautéed mushrooms ($9.50). First of all, $9.50 is an absolute ripoff for an egg sandwich that doesn’t come with meat. Mushrooms and spinach are not expensive ingredients, and neither is cheddar cheese. A bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich should be in the $5-7 range. Egg and cheese with no bacon should cost even less.
Let’s see how she looks.
Unlike my classic cream cheese, they did manage to cut this one in half. Thank God.
The eggs were cooked omelette-style which is a given in California. In this case, they were a bit overdone. On a bagel of normal softness, this would be a perfectly average and adequate breakfast sandwich. But a price factor of $9.50 combined with a rather small and very hard to eat bagel leaves a lot to be desired. Asked to give us a rating, our friend gives this particular sandwich a 5 out of 10 stars.
Final Thoughts
Honest to god, I was rooting for Beauty’s, if for no other reason than it is the closest bagel shop to my house. But I would be hard pressed to call these bagels “good.” Could they just be Montreal bagels and I’m judging them unfairly? It’s possible. But they don’t advertise themselves that way. Complicating the picture is the fact that they actually seem pretty fresh (this quality they do advertise). So what’s the rub? Is it a bad recipe? Too much time in the oven? Or maybe Beauty’s just can’t decide what kind of bagel they’re actually going for.
Fortunately for them, very few of their customers seem to know what to look for in a bagel either, so they continue to remain popular among the locals. But to a Jersey Boy, they receive the following rating.
West Coast: 5
East Coast: 3
P.S. According to their website, Beauty’s is joining forces with Wise Sons, another Oakland bagelry of dubious provenance, who is also due for a review. I will be following this development with interest.
