BAGEL CHAIN GANG (La Bagel Delight)

My search for the best bagels in New York continues….

Living and eating in New York, I purposefully try to avoid chain restaurants. Aside from stopping in to use their restroom, I haven’t been to a McDonald’s in close to a decade. The local mini-chains are somewhat of an exception, which start off as a small business and blossom into a multi-store enterprise. I’d be lying if I say I never step foot inside Shake Shack, Luke’s Lobster, or Amy’s Bread. So I thought La Bagel Delight might be worth it as well.

The strangely named La Bagel Delight (I like to pronounced it with a French accent) opened its first store in Park Slope in 1986 and has since expanded to seemingly every family based neighborhood of western Brooklyn (Park Slope, Dumbo, Prospect Heights, etc.). I was a bit on the outskirts of the yuppi-fi-cation when I located a La Bagel Delight storefront in the more commercial area of Brooklyn Heights on Court Street. This was probably not the most quaint of their locations, but it was hot out, I was hungry, and I wanted a bagel.

I’ve walked by some of their more fancy locations and was surprised when I walked into the hot and table-less joint in Brooklyn Heights. It was quite a large store, but it was sloppily spread out and it didn’t look overly pristine inside. I did notice further in the back there was some bagel making equipment, so I imagine each location hand rolls and bakes the bagels on site. However when I asked the lady if any bagels were hot, she answered unenthusiastically, “No.” Despite the “Hot Bagel” sign outside, I understood 2:00 was a slightly off-hour, although I would have thought the bagels would have been cooked more often on Saturdays.

So I settled on a Plain and an Everything bagel. Many orders were taken at once and a few people in line got confused. I think the cashier got confused herself because it took some people a while to get what they ordered and she gave me my two bagels in separate bags. That made no sense. Maybe I got lost in the shuffle a bit because I hadn’t read their website, which advises customers to move quickly and respond to the call, “Who’s Next?”

This makes me think they’re more focused on quick, fast food than anything else. And that might explain why I was the only crazy person who decided to eat their bagel in the store at a perch that could barely be called a counter.

But I did. I started with the plain bagel which was hard on the outside. It could have been used as a door knocker. The color was quite brown and it was tough to tear apart. Inside, the dough fared a bit better with a little chewy interior but it was dense and slightly stale. The flavor verged on grassy and almost moldy. I can’t imagine these bagels were that much better earlier in the day.

The everything bagel looked as if it was naked. One side barely had any seeds or toppings on it. Flipping it over, I noticed they were more generous than I thought, but not by much. The texture here was also off although the exterior was not as jaw breaking. The inside was chewy, but too dense and this time any off flavors were masked by the sourness of the cream cheese.

I left the shop with a grassy, metallic taste in my mouth. The bagels were less than mediocre and quite hard on the outside. The lackluster customer service and ratty appearance in the shop didn’t help my experience. My guess is this is the beginning of what happens when a business becomes a chain. I imagine some of the other locations deeper into the family-oriented neighborhoods fare better, but the more stores they acquire, the less likely I’ll be to stop in for a nosh.

Does La Bagel Delight have the best bagels in NY? The Brooklyn Heights location certainly doesn’t. It gets a 5 out of 10 for some practically stale bagels with an off-putting flavor.