Name: Finding The Best Bagel in New York | Food Tours | Insider Food
Uploaded: 2025-05-23T07:31:52.000Z
Duration: 25 min 32 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I lived in New York for years and I think it has some of the best food in the world.

I've invited my friend Harry Kirsch over from the UK to teach him how we do things slightly differently over here.

We'll be visiting four of the top rated bagel spots across the city all in one day to see if we can find New York's best bagel.

Our first stop of the day is at Utopia Bagels in Queens.

Red Utopia Bagels in Queens on Utopia Parkway.

And the reason I took you here is because this place has got dynamite bagels.

And although we're out of the beaten path, so maybe not a lot of tourists come out here, don't get me wrong buddy, they make so many bagels here.

That's a lot of bagels.  Dude, they go through two tons of flour a day.

Dude, the oven they got in there is from 1947, which of course was during World War II?

So I figure for the day, every place we go we're getting the traditional New York City bagels and lox.

In the UK we call it a salmon and cream cheese bagel.

So I'm looking for a nice golden brown bagel.

I want it seasoned on both sides, so if we got like everything bagel, we need toppings on the top and the bottom, don't be skimping on it.

Crackly crust on the outside, nice and chewy inside, and then the toppings have got to be good as well.

We need the salmon to be good, the cream cheese to be good.

For me, what I look for is what tastes the best.

Some places are tempted to just overfill for the sake of overfilling it, where it's actually like I don't want that.

I'd rather have like fewer toppings and therefore it holds together much better when you eat it.

I want everything in one bite, so don't be stacking.

Interesting thing about bagels and lox, which I've heard before and I cannot confirm or deny, but it sounds like it's true, and that's all we need for the internet, is that bagels and lox became popular because it was a reaction to eggs benedict, which wasn't kosher, and you're half Jewish.

Have you ever gone kosher or done anything?

I'm 50% Ashkenazi Jewish, which is the type of Jewish where we kind of moved to Eastern Europe and then many people then came to the US.

So honestly, they've kind of brought the bagels with them, so I feel like I'm experiencing like a spiritual homecoming with this episode.

Incredible amount of lox, as you can see, tomato, capers, cream cheese, also got raw red onion on there, all on an everything bagel.

Very like pretty to look at, like you say.

I will say the tomato kind of blends in with the salmon.

So for a second, I thought it was just like a pure wedge of salmon.

Still pretty generous.  I'm not complaining.

Bagels still like a little bit warm, which excites me a lot.

You feeling that?  I mean, these are straight out of the oven.

That tastes like a bagel you're getting over there in London.

This is the first bagel I've had in New York, and it already might be better than any bagel I've had in London.

You guys normally get it with the capers and raw red onion and that stuff?

I'd say the standard one in the UK, if you ask for like a bagel and lox or a bagel with salmon and cream cheese, will just be salmon and cream cheese without the onion, without the tomato, without the capers.

It seems I would have never have thought before having this that like fish for breakfast would kind of turn me off.

I'd say fish for breakfast isn't something that's super uncommon to Europeans.

I think in Jewish culture, in Eastern European culture, and even in Scottish culture, like kippers for breakfast, you will find fish on the menu at a breakfast place.

I was worried when I saw that tomatoes in this, generally speaking, not a huge fan of tomatoes in sandwiches, but this really works.  It's actually got some crunch to it, a little bit of flavor.

I think they've actually seasoned it, which is crucial.

As you can tell, it's clutch for places like this, the fact that they make the bagels.

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Finding The Best Bagel in New York | Food Tours | Insider Food

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