So this morning I had the bright idea to try Maury’s. Yeah, 25 person line. Online ordering was closed when I checked at 9am so I should’ve known. Pass.
So I remember I bookmarked another place called Courage Bagels. This place must’ve had 50 to 100 people in line, making Maury’s look empty by comparison. this photo does not do the line justice. It was down the street. Literally.
I thought something else was going on like one of those limited addition sneaker events LOL. There was no signage that I could see. But driving within a two block radius of this place all you could smell was the pungent aroma of everything bagels. Like in-n-out with their onions.
(By the way, in front of Courage, I saw people eating smoked salmon (yeah… not lox ) … all open-faced. So they do that right, it seems.
I get pissed when I go to Abraham bagel and order a bagel with cream cheese and they spread it on one side of the bagel and close it. I have to stop them and say please “cheese up” both sides.
at least there’s that… I wonder if they still consider that one of their “sandwiches” so you could order that at the window since there are no “loose” bagels. I must admit, I kinda like the term “loose bagel”… sounds like one that fell out of the baker’s dozen bag…
maybe you can make a sandwich out of a Noah’s bagel since that’s circular bread with a hole in the middle. But an actual bagel has too much chew/density to use as sandwich material-- the ingredients push out of the edges when you bite down.
I was going to take a day off from bagels and then…
My carb binge continued today with a long overdue revisit to New York Bagel Co on San Vicente in Brentwood. There are like 400 places all with similar names in LA, right.
Years ago I lived right down the street and a friend of mine introduced me to it. He grew up on Long Island and said these were the closest he had found to a Long Island bagel. Of course that’s before the bagel scene got a lot better here in LA.
They were out of onion, so just 3. The salt are salted on one side, the others are on both. These were loose bagels (there’s a joke I won’t let die!).
To their credit, you can also order flat versions. Original Brooklyn Water Bagel carries flat ones too called flagels LOL.
The outsides are crusty. I was here late in the morning so perhaps there’s crisp earlier in the day. Don’t know. The insides were chewy, on the tougher side. They were more bread-like than my top places but less so than say Bagel Nosh. A couple of diners on the outside tables were eating bagel French toast.
The bagel itself without the topping is a bit plain. Not nearly as flavorful as many of the others. The place has GREAT whitefish salad to put on these and a nice assortment of cream cheese they weigh and sell by the pound. And considering this is Brentwood, it is priced very well. A bagel with cream cheese is $1.95.
All in all, not bad. I’d put them above Bagel Nosh in my rankings above. Though Bagel Nosh still has the best QPR breakfast in town.
) … all open-faced. So they do that right, it seems.
