Which Supermarket Bagel Is Best?

June 29, 2023 4:36 PM

A Blind Taste Test of Thomas’, Trader Joe’s, and More But the bagels you can find in bread aisles across the country have their own distinct charm, and there’s something about their springy textures and delicate wheaty flavor that make them, well, loveable. Perhaps supermarket bagels were your family’s Sunday morning staple—a pile of sliced, toasted bagels in the center of the table, as everyone reached for peanut butter or jelly or Nutella. Or maybe they remind you of rushing out the door to catch the schoolbus, cream-cheesed bagel in hand. However you enjoyed them, supermarket bagels are delicious in their own nostalgic right.
posted by SituationNormal (64 comments total)

Lenders egg bagels.
posted by clavdivs at 4:42 PM on June 29, 2023 [15 favorites]

bagels you can find in bread aisles across the country have their own distinct charm

no
posted by logicpunk at 4:45 PM on June 29, 2023 [50 favorites]

They aren't nostalgic at all for me. I eat them regularly. There are no bagel shops within a normal distance from where I live, and since this is eastern WA, I haven't done the research because I'm sure any that I could drive to wouldn't be worth the drive. Franz Bakery is sort of dominant in my area, and their mini-bagels are fine with flavored cream cheese.
posted by hippybear at 4:47 PM on June 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

You know how when someone wasn’t good looking people used to say he/she had “a great personality”?

That’s what I want in a bagel… distinct charm.
posted by Mchelly at 4:55 PM on June 29, 2023 [5 favorites]

Awesome, I am going to buy some Whole Foods bagels next time I am there. There is one by my new work building and I plan to hit the hot bar for lunch once in a while. I remember getting a bagel for breakfast most days in tenth grade and they had to be store bought. Our snack bar lady heated them up on the flat top. This was 1992 and the only other bagels we had in stores around us were 1st National. The sesame ones are pretty good.
posted by soelo at 4:56 PM on June 29, 2023

the gluten free bagels we get have a LOT of personality. sigh.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:02 PM on June 29, 2023 [8 favorites]

I visit Bon Appetit a hell of a lot less than I used to before the ... unpleasantness ... but even so their list of best bagels in the US might be instructive. There are some reasonably out-of-the-way places (Biddeford Maine?) represented.
posted by aramaic at 5:08 PM on June 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

Store-brand bagels are better than all of these, at least in upstate NY. ShopRite, Foodtown, Stop & Shop etc.
posted by swift at 5:14 PM on June 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

I sometimes forget how spoiled I am living in the northeast. Even in this semi-rural area we have three good bagel places and countless really good pizza places to choose from. It just never occurred to me to buy bagels in the supermarket.
posted by freakazoid at 5:23 PM on June 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

Thomas Everything Bagels are pretty good. There's another brand I always grab when I see it but the name escapes me. It looks generic, maybe a local Chicago brand? I don't know.
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:37 PM on June 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

My hometown of Las Cruces, NM, way down south in the state, was oddly a hotbed of bagel shops in the nineties. I don't know if they are now, but there was a firm culture there of different shop-made bagels of various stripes and a whole lot of different various blended cream cheeses to smear on them.
posted by hippybear at 5:48 PM on June 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

In New York, at least, in addition to the shelf-stable not-quite-bagels that were being tested here, Trader Joe's stores sell a stack of three real bagels in paper packaging for 1.99 or so. Sesame, plain, or everything. Stocked alongside the (also excellent) ciabatta rolls, a bit apart from the bread section where the not-quite-bagels are found. And definitely a winner compared to everything else on this list.

Are those not stocked nationwide?
posted by nobody at 5:50 PM on June 29, 2023

Maybe Costco isn't "supermarket" but they boil and bake. Still not the same as fresh bakery, but if you toast, and for the price! And my Costco bakery is kosher!
posted by atomicstone at 5:54 PM on June 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

We can buy Kettleman’s Montreal bagels at most grocery stores in Ottawa. Hand rolled and cooked in a wood oven. No need to buy factory bagels.
posted by fimbulvetr at 5:55 PM on June 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

When I want a good bagel I make my own. To be honest, they aren't as good as the local bakery bagels but they're still pretty good and I can eat them as fresh as possible. They don't last long in a house of picky eaters, so there's that.

But anyway, store brand bagels are fine for me. Local bakery bagels are better but not always worth the price. Costco bagels, same. There's a new place close by that advertises Montreal style bagels that I keep meaning to try. Maybe this weekend!
posted by ashbury at 6:01 PM on June 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

Our local ShopRite sells what they call mini-bagels, which are pretty close to what bagels were like before, well, let's say the business demographic changed, and the new bakers decided to compete on how big can you make a bagel before it becomes a truck tire. An 8cm bagel is the proper size. It holds the correct amount of stuff so eating 2 or 3 with different contents is decent.
posted by hexatron at 6:05 PM on June 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

My work computer just did the most annoying multiple crash madness that turned what should have been a 10 minute task into a full-on 2 hours 2 computers near meltdown to complete. Then I had an emotional support bagel. it helped a lot
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 6:33 PM on June 29, 2023 [8 favorites]

I find it troubling how many restaurants won't let me in with my emotional support bagel.
posted by hippybear at 6:52 PM on June 29, 2023 [8 favorites]

"how big can you make a bagel before it becomes a truck tire"

Oh yes. I'm visiting our NY office from London and grabbing a bite of breakfast from the cafteria at work. These bagels... if someone was drowning I could throw one as a life preserver. How do people eat a whole one of these giant things?

But back in the UK, store bought bagels are usually horrible, just bagel-shaped bread, the same way that a lot of baguettes are just long thin bread. No character. Luckily there's a bagel place in Fulham that bakes their own on the premises, and they're great.
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 7:00 PM on June 29, 2023

I love Montreal bagels, and also love New York bagels, though not quite as much. If you already love some of these supermarket bagels, or if this site helps you find one you like, I'm genuinely happy for you. Yay bagels!
posted by maudlin at 7:02 PM on June 29, 2023 [5 favorites]

Is there some international body that oversees what cities can have a bagel denomination?
posted by perhapses at 7:05 PM on June 29, 2023

I've got a couple of bagel shops nearby but I don't make it a point to go to them unless I'm going to be there anyway. Otherwise the supermarket stuff is good enough for me.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 7:12 PM on June 29, 2023

I guess I do have a couple of bagel specialty shops within, um... 20 miles of me. Maybe if I'm in the area.
posted by hippybear at 7:15 PM on June 29, 2023

43rdAnd9th, there are lots of decent places to buy bagels in London. Mostly North London, admittedly, and none of those places are supermarkets.

Euphorium or Gail’s are not too bad, if you are looking for a chain bakery. Grodzinski in North London and Rinkoff’s in East London also pretty decent.
posted by tinkletown at 7:33 PM on June 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

I was more of a Lender's onion bagel child. I ate so many of those. Breakfast, lunch, snack. It did not matter. Those things were great.

Do I at all think grocery store bagels are anything like real bagels? Absolutely not. But it's also like microwave pizza. It's pizza-like if you squint at it but it's also its own thing. Grocery store bagels are what they are and they can serve a purpose.

Sadly, I really can't tolerate wheat anymore but I do indulge sometimes. And now I want a bagel. (A good one because if I'm going to deal with the consequences, it needs to be worth it.)
posted by edencosmic at 7:40 PM on June 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

MetaFilter: if I'm going to deal with the consequences, it needs to be worth it
posted by hippybear at 7:45 PM on June 29, 2023 [5 favorites]

+1 for Costco bagels, at least the ones they sold 25+ years ago. My mom loved the Sundried Tomato flavour (ahhh, the 90s) and so that's what we bought every week, and covered with Philadelphia cream cheese. We're from Montreal and it was understood that these bagels were an entirely different food item from Saint-Viateur bagels, of course.
posted by third word on a random page at 7:46 PM on June 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

One of the saddest things about my joints all going south is that it hurts my jaw to eat good bagels. Sigh.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 8:15 PM on June 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

Lenders: not perfect, but they kept me alive and functioning in college, so +1 to them forever.
posted by aramaic at 8:16 PM on June 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

I guess I have missed there was a "bagel boom", but even if I didn't, I don't think I would be spending $20 for a bagel sandwich.
posted by meowzilla at 8:20 PM on June 29, 2023

Is there some international body that oversees what cities can have a bagel denomination?

[whispers in Yiddish…]

I think the NY vs Montreal bagel hierarchy is the only significant schism. LA tries, but their perpetual failure is part of what makes a quintessential LA bagel (why are they so disappointing? It must be something in the water)
posted by Mchelly at 8:25 PM on June 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

In New York, at least, in addition to the shelf-stable not-quite-bagels that were being tested here, Trader Joe's stores sell a stack of three real bagels in paper packaging for 1.99 or so. Sesame, plain, or everything. Stocked alongside the (also excellent) ciabatta rolls, a bit apart from the bread section where the not-quite-bagels are found. And definitely a winner compared to everything else on this list.

Are those not stocked nationwide?

They are not. Trader Joe's also works with local vendors, especially for things like bread, produce, and alcohol. This wasn't obvious to me until I moved to a part of the Midwest and went from having two favorite breads at Trader Joe's to having zero edible breads at Trader Joe's.

I'm kinda doubtful that it would help much to sell real bagels on the shelf, though. Some time ago, I read an (informal) investigative article about bagel shops in New York. They did taste tests and whatever and the conclusion was the only real factor that went into a proper bagel's subjective quality was freshness. Ever since I read that, I stopped having a particular order at NY bagel shops. I walk in and ask what has just come out of the oven. This creates a bit of randomness that I find attractive, in addition to the bagels invariably tasting great.

When we're talking about any kind of bagel that's been sitting around cold on a shelf, I'm not sure I even care much about its chewiness vs. breadiness anymore. (Toasting, to me, is not a solution. It is a monkey's-paw form of resurrection that doesn't actually help much. If I have to toast a bagel, I do not want that bagel.)

As far as making your own bagels goes, it can be a fun baking project. Just invest in a bagel skimmer first, or you are probably going to lose your mind. It is the definition of fresh, and for some reason people find homemade bagels very impressive, no matter how misshapen your misshapes are (and they will be misshapen).
posted by desert outpost at 8:31 PM on June 29, 2023 [7 favorites]

When I first moved to Denver, store bought was the only option I could find. Coming from Philadelphia, it was difficult to realize the good bagel that was to be had in almost any section of the city was not available in Denver. We talked to a local baker and he thought it had to do with the altitude, that most local small bakeries had tried but ultimately failed to make good bagels. Now there are multiple options, with Rosenbergs being probably the best. We're also the home of Einsteins, and if you're in a city that has one, you know that's not what most of us think of when we want a bagel.
posted by evilDoug at 8:59 PM on June 29, 2023

This will make many people here angry, but almost any middling sized north American city does bagels as well as ny or Montreal. Get the tar and feathers. Freshness it what defines a good bagel, not the water or any other nonsense. The best bagel is the freshest bagel. And a wood fired oven.
posted by Keith Talent at 9:01 PM on June 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

I've researched grocery bagel brands before, Thomas always gets a good write-up but tastes like cardboard to me. Pepperidge Farm is at least unoffensive. I have some good bagel places sort-of near me, but not near/convenient enough to be a default breakfast/lunch option during the workday the way a plastic bag of bread toruses that last for weeks in the fridge can be.
posted by rivenwanderer at 9:19 PM on June 29, 2023

I'm getting a kick out of these replies. I worked at a mid-sized (state level) kosher bagel bakery for a good while. We had branded shops in various places and provided the bagels you find in the bins in grocery stores. It was in Albuquerque, NM which is also a mile high city so the "it had to do with the altitude" was correct, water boils at lower temperature. We used steam for that bit of the equation. I was the mix master and whipped up 150 pounds of dough at a time fed through three forming machines. Started really early like 3 or 4 in the morning, just me and the boss setting up the day's run and tinkering with the machines. I made probably half a dozen different types of dough, the external toppings and such came later, only the insides were my domain. Cranberry, cinnamon rasin, blueberry, green chile (the best), wheat, sun dried tomato, walnut, and I forget a few. My housemates and myself had a big brown bag of fresh bagels every day.

Bagels in plastic bags on the store shelf with preservatives and such are OK-ish, but even the high altitude not-quite-a-true-classic-bagel bagels are better if they're fresh. (But frozen dough is just fine, some outlets had proofers and ovens and could could do that bit, some didn't (and stores didn't)). Fun-ish job, usually a bit stoned, worked with punks, but the only weird thing in the bagels was the blueberry syrup to make them blue and actually taste like the embedded blueberries.

As for store bought, if they're in a big plastic bin, they bight be made that morning or yesterday. If they're in a plastic bag on the shelf..... :(
posted by zengargoyle at 9:57 PM on June 29, 2023 [14 favorites]

I don’t think there are a ton of bagel shops in AZ but we happened to land just half a mile from the only one we’ve found so far. They (and the pizza shop we like) have a NYC-water generator. The scientist in me side eyes this but we keep going back for more bagels and pizza…
posted by Tandem Affinity at 10:43 PM on June 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

Anyone who would spend time rating these bagels has obviously never tried the real thing.

Anyone else know where to get something approaching Montreal/Saint-Viateur bagels in Seattle?
posted by morspin at 11:30 PM on June 29, 2023

Once in the early days of cell phones, a friend called me from the airport. He had something special for me from New York, could we meet up? For some reason, I knew right away what it was: a classic bagel with cream cheese and lox. I don't like bagels, but it was so sweet of him to think of me and make this effort. Is there a German or perhaps Yiddish word for when you eat something because of love, even though you don't like it?

Anyway, I don't like bagels, but they are obviously worse from the supermarket. There was a reason my friend transported a freshly made bagel across the Atlantic.
posted by mumimor at 12:09 AM on June 30, 2023

Where I live there are no bagels. Some bakeries sell a circular bread roll with a hole in the middle, but no. The Mexican brand Bimbo is now selling bagels (they have three varieties, plain, seeds & brioche) and while they are a long way from even being as good as a Lender's bagel, they are at least in the category.

The best bagels in the world are from Brother's Bagels in Berkeley, CA, in the late 1980s. (The store is still there, it's called Berkeley Bagels now, and the bagels are still good (at least they boil them!), but not like they were in the 1980s.
posted by chavenet at 1:20 AM on June 30, 2023

For store-bought, none of the pre-split or frozen bagels are worth a penny to me. I had a TJ's bagel habit for a long time, though. Even though they're as bready as any, I would have a bag of the plain in the pantry more often than not. I had a ritual where I'd split the bagel, wet the outsides, and pat them in kosher salt I'd spread on the cutting board in front of my toaster. The salt would stick, the toaster would dry and affix the grains to the bagel, and I'd have a tolerable salt bagel for breakfast. Lots of cream cheese (and not that whipped shit that turns to goop that every storefront bagel shop uses).
posted by rhizome at 1:56 AM on June 30, 2023

OK couple things. If the reviewer considers thomas' bagels as likeable then this whole thing is suspect. Those are atrocious. And don't get me wrong, I love lenders... But the Thomas are mealy and just taste like oddly shaped slightly stale wonder bread. Goddammit they're terrible. We've tried so many times.

And then... No Publix bagels? Their greenwise brand is organic and boil/baked. Genuinely a decent bagel.

Bah I say. BAH!
posted by chasles at 1:57 AM on June 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

I quite like the New York Bakery brand of mass-produced bagel, but then, I've never had a real one. (Apparently there are bagel places in my benighted county, to my surprise, so I may be able to rectify this to some degree.)
posted by entity447b at 3:13 AM on June 30, 2023

I guarantee every single one of these are better than what passes for a bagel in any UK supermarket and, honestly, nearly any UK deli/bakery. "Bread with a hole" is the best of what we can hope for.
posted by parm at 4:08 AM on June 30, 2023

bread with a hole
black as your soul
I'd rather die
than eat Tesco roll
posted by taquito sunrise at 4:25 AM on June 30, 2023 [28 favorites]

Anyone who would spend time rating these bagels has obviously never tried the real thing.

Well, no, these are people who care a great deal about food and certainly have tried fresh bagels before.
posted by tiny frying pan at 4:40 AM on June 30, 2023 [3 favorites]

(And were paid handsomely by Whole Foods to say theirs was the best, most likely)
posted by tiny frying pan at 4:42 AM on June 30, 2023

chow down the bagels have been served
they have the schmear that you deserve
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 4:55 AM on June 30, 2023 [13 favorites]

I grew up on these. Then in college, I dated a guy from Rockland County. Visits to his family were a revelation. I never looked back. Nostalgia in this case is more like "pain because the past was so embarrassing."
posted by eirias at 5:19 AM on June 30, 2023

Grocery store bagels are what they are and they can serve a purpose.

Pizza bagels! They can convey cream cheese or lox etc just fine. But pizza I don't think we ever made pizza bagels with nicer bagels, just the store bought ones.
posted by ghost phoneme at 5:27 AM on June 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

I just make my own. I follow this recipe pretty closely, except I usually just use 1 tbsp of baking soda + 1 tbsp brown sugar for the water bath, and I use all purpose flour with a little less water.

Pretty easy and delish. Shaping them takes practice.
posted by vitout at 5:27 AM on June 30, 2023 [3 favorites]

In Toronto, I can get Kettleman's at Costco at St Viatuer at my local Metro. So there's no need to ever bother with the supermarket brands.

What I don't understand is that none of the grocery brands in Canada make Montreal-style bagels. If I could get a house-brand Montreal bagel I would buy it all the time.
posted by thecjm at 6:08 AM on June 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

The grocery store bagels (specifically, the ones in plastic bags in the bread aisle) are uniformly terrible, if your standard of comparison is an authentic, fresh bagel. (I had quite good fresh-ish bagels at Wegmans, back when I lived in a Wegmans area, however.) But if you ignore what they are purporting to be, and instead accept them as sort of a dense round bread with a hole in it, they are perfectly fine for, say, sandwiches while car camping. They are an adequate vehicle for putting things on, hand-sized so no utensils needed, and taste unoffensively like plain grocery store bread.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:08 AM on June 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

If you do find some good bagels and want to store them, you can freeze them and use J. Kenji Lopez-Alt's method of rehydrating and toasting bagels.
posted by thecjm at 6:16 AM on June 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

We've got at least 3 bagel shops that prepare them from scratch near me in NC. One is also a kosher deli, one was founded be a NY transplant, and the other is a chain that's not half bad. Store bought just can't compare. :(
posted by lyam at 7:56 AM on June 30, 2023

I'm in the bagel desert of the upper midwest and somehow the best I can generally get is frozen bagels that have packaging that looks like it was designed for a dollar store brand blank cassette in 1981.
posted by Ferreous at 8:06 AM on June 30, 2023

I thought there had been an FPP about it a couple of years ago when a bunch of articles came out, but the history of Lenders bagels is pretty interesting
posted by Mchelly at 9:23 AM on June 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

desert outpost: "If I have to toast a bagel, I do not want that bagel."

QFT

Ferreous: "I'm in the bagel desert of the upper midwest"

How far from Minneapolis are you? Because the bagels at my local neighborhood bakery are pretty damned good. Bialys too, if you prefer your bread unboiled and oniony. Fresh daily, when they run out, they're out.
posted by caution live frogs at 11:53 AM on June 30, 2023

I'm in the bagel desert of the upper midwest

I despaired when we moved from the Twin Cities. And then I found this.
posted by Ber at 12:42 PM on June 30, 2023

I'm 2+ hours away so a bit much for a bagel run
posted by Ferreous at 1:21 PM on June 30, 2023

No one is claiming these are superior to your local bakery offerings. My local bakery doesn't do bagels and is not open Sundays. I like bagels for breakfast so I buy them at a store. I've had fresh ones in Montreal and New York. They aren't the same but they fulfill my needs.
posted by soelo at 6:40 PM on June 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

I think this post pairs well with the FFP about Chinese people poking fun at "white people food" - i.e. that there are certain foods that don't make sense (in terms of pleasure) unless they are fresh. Otherwise they're just boring/bland. Like many people of Jewish decent (and I imagine others born in major bagel centers), I grew up with the view that bagels are to be the star of the show when you eat them. If properly fresh, you don't toast them, and they are delightful with just a schmear of cream cheese or butter. At most, you add fresh tomato, red onion, and if you're living large, some lox.

In other words, it's kinda if there was a list "what are the best mass produced sliced bread for dipping in olive oil." Or "best mass produced bread to slice up for a cheese plate at your next dinner party." Mass produced bread has a purpose, but it's a utilitarian purpose, not a food you savor. For me, unless a bagel is of a certain quality, the way I like to eat bagels (i.e. simply) would result in a boring meal. But I knew people growing up who ate these store bought bagels as a substitute for toasting mass produced bread, which made a certain amount of sense to me. But they aren't a real replacement for bagels.
posted by coffeecat at 8:02 AM on July 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

For the record, if I'm promoting, actually good bagels, it's Bethesda Bagels in my adopted town, and Bagel Factory - the one on Cadillac wthe shittiest trader joes style parking lot (also for amazing soups and challah!) from my birthplace, Los Angeles. Full disclosure, we're close friends w the non-jewish part owner of bagel factory (so they can stay open on shabbat!) and he used my personal babka recipe to bake us the most giant babka you ever saw so I could have chocolate babka as wedding cake. )
posted by atomicstone at 11:09 AM on July 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

Calvin Trillin wrote a funny bit I can't find about one of his (new york raised) young daughters being baffled at receiving what was clearly just round-bread-with-a-hole and being told it was, in fact, a bagel. ...come to that, there's ANOTHER funny bit about how (maybe the same) daughter hated chinese food as a child and would only go out with a bagel, and that when she got older she'd get roundly mocked by her peers for not liking NY chinatown food...and Calvin offered to stage an event with news cameras where she would be seen entering a Chinese restaurant and being patted down to prove there was no bagel in evidence.

My wife LOVES montreal style. I honestly don't get it, I prefer NY style. And in either case I don't really see the point in eating them if they don't come from a good source. If you want okay bread, just eat bread. I ALSO think a bagel is a shit vehicle for a sandwich on account of the HOLE, and I wish to heck this would stop. (We are hoping to travel to Montreal later this summer for some vac, wildfires notwithstanding, and my wife has made it very clear we have to hit BOTH st viateur and fairmount. this is fine with me, because I have learned that there's a dim sum place that opens at 7 am. Eyes on the prize, folks.)
posted by hearthpig at 2:29 PM on July 3, 2023