Brooklyn Bagel and Coffee Co.

Excuse me for the lack of posts - when I'm in a new place I like to eat out and experiment with new local ingredients in recipes.  The latter should provide more posts, but I've mainly been eating out here in NYC.  Although, I love the huge array of Central and South American ingredients, like cassava and different chiles and thus will cook with them soon! 

photo from http://eatupnewyork.files.wordpress.com

So let me talk about bagels today.  I feel like a good bagel doesn't need any toppings.  Plain, toasted, with a bit of butter, or a bit of cream cheese if you must, and it's perfect the way it is.  Like a good photo doesn't need photoshop, a good bagel doesn't need a load of ingredients in between.  I really ought to go to more bagel places, but for breakfast I'm constrained to perhaps a 500m radius of where my sister lives (who I'm visiting at the moment).  The Brooklyn Bagels and Coffee Company is within this area and there's always a line.  So this one fine morning, I got up early and went over there.  Now, the big menus in these places intimidate me  because I know everybody's in line waiting and I don't have time to peruse the menu and contemplate for half an hour.  I saw spelt bagels and I went for it.  It was so sweet and nutty, it was spectacular.  That's why I love wholegrain baking, plain flour is just so plain and dull sometimes.

 I can't say anything about their other bagels, but I can assure you that the spelt bagels are amazing.