Went to Griffith for a hike and hit up the new Boichik. Cardio for carbs! We got stuck behind the horses. Overheard from the elite on high: “how did those people walking get here? did they WALK up?” “what hike are we on? is it the hollywood hike?”
Does my Boichik hot take belong in this thread? Overall I thought it was pretty decent. Had them a while ago in the bay area which was enough for me to pick up some extra for home. We managed to slide in after the lunch rush and avoid a line, though it was several-people deep at times. Nothing too crazy though.
Thought the bagel was good. I’d come back if I was in the area. Their bagels are too small for their sandwiches though! I got a whitefish salad sandwich, which was good. But everything splooges out the moment you bite down, because the crumb is pretty firm. I end up irrigating the filling to different bites on my own. I’m honestly not sure if they’ve tried eating their own bagel sandwiches, because it’s pretty difficult. Also, beautiful cross-sections made for instagram, but it’s like 60% vegetable by volume in the very middle. Bagels made for Californians … Egg salad was good too.
Very different from my usual NYC go-to, which is a nova-lox cream cheese from Leo’s. Those are HUGE pillowy creatures where the vertical mass of filling usually covers just 70% of the surface area (so the splooge lands on the bagel). But even a bagel sandwich here is cheaper than a flight back to nyc by far.
The upside is that the bagels are smaller, so I can indulge more often ?!? Overall I’m happy to pick up extra to bring home and fill properly.
Edited to add – the whitefish salad sandwich was ~10$ and lox sandwich ~$16. I get that small bagels are their thing, but I guess it also keeps the prices in check. Another fix is to get the vegetables on the sandwich on the side (or just order the filling I guess!). Got pumpernickel everything – which was indeed very good.
As an Ashkenazi, I don’t personally find Courage heretical or ‘hole poked dreck’ or whatever pejorative Rosenthal is fond of, though I understand the argument about evolution and appropriation.
Also don’t think Esparza is antisemitic, just a hypocrite. Having watched his diatribe against tostadas in the Mexican diaspora, he’s at best selective about authenticity.
One must be really miserable in life to keep injecting your views on cultural appropriation, ownership, heritage, history blah blah blah into every topic about food. I love bagels and I love tortas. I also love baos, whole wheat bread and pitas. I’m not downplaying the significance but its just so tiring. Like we are being lectured at every turn.
It’s become commonplace to inject colonization into every discussion. I saw it on Reddit with discussion regarding restaurants during the Noma controversy. You see, the head chefs are like colonizers, and the other chefs are like colonized people.
It’s a little more complicated than that, all the people mentioned also create really useful content that is good to know. They have their followings/platforms largely because of that. Sometimes they use those platforms to say things we may not agree with and people express that in the comments or their own channels, that is kind of the nature of social media in the current age. You can block/unfollow, but really it’s up to the individual to make the determination if it’s worth the tradeoff. There’s probably a better way to do this where you can more selectively see what creators post, but there are all sorts of costs and tradeoffs involved with making that kind of system and probably the tech companies benefit more from the increased engagement.
We should subject ourselves to garbage takes that game the algorithm so that we don’t lose out on a wider conversation? Fuck that.
My hot take is that LA prioritizes the sandwich over the schmear so of course the local variety eats like bread. My three year old knew Courage was bullshit within a few bites. I am fairly certain that I would not be able to tell the difference between a blind bite of the Gjusta sesame bagel and the (sesame) seeded baguette.
Thanks to @Gr8pimpin for all of the legwork in this thread. My boy and I have slowly been working our way through the LA bagel scene, Maury’s is our pick for now. Belle’s has the best schmear. Haven’t made it over the hill to Hank’s.
I’ve been finding myself passing through Burbank quite often lately so I’ve been ordering at Bagel Boss. My initial impression of them was a little off. Pretty serviceable.
They have two of my new favorites, pumpernickel everything bagel, and an egg everything bagel.
they used to have belly lox before I discovered this place unfortunately they got rid of it because no one knew what it was and it kept going bad.
100 agree with this ^^^
Another place that for a short while had belly lox. I need to get over there. On my hit list for ages.
Did I mention that I had tried a Jyan Issac bagel after Layla ran out w/ 2 people ahead of me in line?
If I haven’t, also not a bagel, IMHO.
You’re idea that LA prioritize a sandwich over a relatively unadorned bagel is an interesting one. My own take is that people in LA don’t know how to love the chew, and we’ve previously subjected to so many bagels w/ bad chew that we don’t know that another type exists.
Can’t recall if I had mentioned this next thing, but someone a few wks ago told me that they had tried a bagel from NYB&D in Santa Monica and that they didn’t like it (they had lived in Brooklyn for several yrs). So not sure if the SaMo location has also changed their recipe.
One view: People like what they like. Nothing wrong with liking soft bagels and soft pasta.
Another view: What makes bagels and pasta special is the texture. True appreciation requires learning to like the texture.
ChatGPT’s view: taste is personal, so there’s nothing morally wrong with liking soft bagels or soft pasta. But some foods are defined by a texture that is central to what they are trying to be. A bagel’s chew and pasta’s bite are not random details; they are part of the craft. So the fairest position is that preference is always valid, while appreciation can still be educated. You can genuinely prefer softer versions and still recognize that a well-made bagel or properly cooked pasta is aiming for something firmer. Preference answers “what do I enjoy?” Appreciation answers “what is this food supposed to be?” Those do not always have to match.
Concur on the Jyan Isaac “bagel”. I like their bread so I thought I would give their bagel a try, it’s the worst (or best?) example I’ve had of a torus shaped dinner roll masquerading as a bagel. Completely lacking in the texture you expect from a bagel, and possibly not even boiled before baking? Hasi bread’s also on the west side was decent though!
These people saying bagels are just bread are unserious or ignorant about bread. I mean it’s pretty absurdly reductionist. All bagels are bread, not all breads are bagels. Apply that to a species: “All humans are mammals, not all mammals are humans”. Extend that to the statements Matt and Bill are making… Alex, I’ll take taxonomies for $1000.
Maybe next they can revive the debate on whether a hotdog is a sandwich?
