A Bagel Grows on Beverly: Brooklyn Bagel Bakery

Every Angeleno loves it when their friends/relatives/business associates from New York come to town and complain endlessly that there aren't any good bagels in LA. Never mind that we have the greatest variety of Chinese food outside of China, an enormous spread of Southeast Asian cuisine, Korean, Armenian, Central American and out of this world Mexican. No, if you can't make a dough-shaped ring to their liking, your city sucks eggs (or egg creams).

Now, New Yorkers may annoy us with their queries (in retaliation, I take them to Langer's and let them awe at our counterintuitive pastrami superiority), but in this case, we have to admit that they are right. Our bagels largely suck. They are too big, too soft and filled with things like fruit and chocolate that have no business ever touching a bagel. (Of course, it's ever harder to find a proper bagel in Manhattan, but that's another story).

By far, the best bagels I've had in LA are at Brooklyn Bagel Bakery on Beverly. Their bagels are properly hard on the outside and chewy in the middle. They do have some of the aforementioned fruit flavors, but we will cut them some slack due to the quality of their product.

So, when your cousins from New York come to town...try to get them to go for a Oaxacan breakfast, but when that fails, head down to Brooklyn Bagels.

Brooklyn Bagel Bakery
2217 Beverly Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90057
(213) 413-4114.