Some of you might recall in March of last year there was a New York Times article with the headline “The Best Bagels Are in California (Sorry, New York),” written by the Los Angeles-based Tejal Rao. I like Rao’s work a lot and the piece was reported well, had a lot of good quotes and insights and then I suppose an editor—maybe or maybe not with the help of Rao, you never know—slapped a very good headline on it that would likely piss off a good portion of Times readers who would then share it with other people in a bout of righteous How dare they sort of way even though—sorry, it’s true—the quality of New York bagels have fallen off in many cases. The piece wasn’t Rao ranting about how bagels suck in New York and they’re better out west; it’s more a California bagel scene report.
But New Yorkers love to get pissed off about things since we don’t already have enough to complain about and even I have been known to get in on the action even though I’m almost always joking. I know L.A. and the Bay Area well enough to know there have been Jews and New Yorkers in these places for decades, and there were things they wanted to leave behind (the subway, Times Square, rising rents for such small spaces), but there were things they also wanted to import or build as a tribute to where they came from. Hence, you get Langer’s serving the best pastrami sandwich (note: not the best pastrami. I still say Katz’s meat is the best, but the sandwich and the cost is too much) or Canter’s being one of the last of a certain kind of old-school Jewish delicatessens you can go and just sit in, drinking coffee, eating toast, reading a paper, kibitzing. Why wouldn’t there be good bagels out west?
And since—to paraphrase the late, great Bobby Heenan—I’m a Substack journalist and noted bagel eater, I decided I had to be brave, wake up at 5:30 in the morning and meet a friend to stand on line to get Courage Bagels before they opened at 7 and the line got really long. And when I say really long, folks, I worked the door at Magnolia Bakery during the Sex in the City days and I saw the sad interns forced to wait to get a cronut for their tyrannical bosses in the early days of that freak show. I’ve seen things, I’ve seen lines. I’m not a fan of them. New Yorkers, for some sick reason, are fans of them. Or, maybe, the tourists are fans of them and we just get caught up in them because we have no other choice. Whatever it is, I try to avoid having to line up and wait more than 10 minutes for anything, but especially—especially a bagel.
But, as the kids say, when in Rome. Or, in this case, Silver Lake at 6:45 in the morning. So I got there and I waited and, truth be told, it wasn’t that bad. I was instantly struck by the crowd because if I ever go anywhere on a Sunday morning and there are people waiting, it’s very much the parents who just want a few moments of peace from their kids’ crowd. This was a very mixed crowd of people getting off overnight shifts, a couple of hypey 30- and 40-somethings, a bunch of locals and a couple of older people who probably wake up at that time either way and just like having something to do. But what threw me off was nobody was talking. I know it’s early, but it was dead silent. I couldn’t tell if I loved that or if it chilled me to my core. I hadn’t had coffee yet.
But I’m skipping all the way ahead and getting to the good stuff. The bagel. My friend who goes all the time told me everything bagel with everything: smoked salmon, cream cheese, tomatoes, onions, dill and capers. So I said great, let’s do that. And here is my very short review of the Courage Bagels bagel: It’s very good. Can I find better bagels in New York? Sure. But that’s because I know what I want when I’m there. The six or so places that pass my personal test of being Very Good Bagels are New York bagel places. As Rao mentioned in the Times piece, what Courage serves “looked like Montreal-style bagels.” That was also what I thought upon first glance. And the only time I’ve had a bagel prepared that way in Montreal that I can recall is at Beauty’s, which was a religious experience to me. When I go to a place like St-Viateur, I just get some bagels and some cream cheese. I go there for the bagels. That’s it. I like those bagels on their own, nothing really needs to be done to them because they’re so sweet and seedy and not what I’m really used to, so I enjoy it.
Courage is Montreal-influenced. I wouldn’t quite say it’s Montreal-style, at least not the way Black Seed has tried to take the founders’ hometown bagel and export it to the rest of the world. The Courage bagel stands out on its own. It’s a bagel I loved and don’t think could be replicated anywhere else. It doesn’t taste like a Montreal bagel and it doesn’t taste like a New York bagel. But what blew my mind a little is you can see them making the bagels right there in front of you, but they come out toasted. That fact blew me away. I don’t really have an opinion on the toasted or not toasted thing which, if you live in New York, you know is actually a thing. To me, that thing came to signify a place telling you that they don’t need to toast because their bagels are fresh. But like New Yorkers love to do, the whole “You toast your bagel, bro?” thing became a weird personality trait. Toasting can add something to a bagel, and in the case of the Courage everything I got, it really did boost the experience, giving the bagel a really nice crunch that I loved.
Here’s where I stand on the Courage bagel: It’s really fucking good. If you’re fine with lines, then stand in it. If not, get there early. Is it better than a New York bagel? Who cares?!? It’s whatever you like, man. In terms of a “sandwich bagel,” I will say Courage hands yours over in a box and its served open-faced, which is only way you should eat a bagel. If I see you eating a bagel like an actual sandwich, then I’m probably going to mutter “That’s odd.” I mean, you do you, but you eat it open-faced. Just because it’s handed to you in wax paper at Russ & Daughters like a sandwich doesn’t mean you eat it that way. The one thing I will say that the Courage bagel has over NYC or Montreal or anywhere else you want to throw into the mix has nothing to do with the bagel itself. Not surprisingly, it’s the ingredients. The lox is sliced so thin and tastes so lively. They put lil cornichons on them. I love cornichons! The tomato, onions and those beautiful sprigs of dill…heaven. If a New York bagel place opens up and they’re like “Hey, we have our own garden out back where we pick our dill from” then I will likely become a customer of that place. I’m a stranger in this strange land and this whole fresh produce everywhere you go thing is still a novelty to me, and that part of the experience will live on in my mind when I start telling people why the Courage bagel deserves the love and long lines.