The Egg Onion Bagel
The bagel you see in the picture above is the result of Twitter. To wit: I announced on my Twitter feed that I was in Boca Raton for Thanksgiving (that's where my family lives) and Shuna of eggbeater responded: "You're in Boca?! Will you make a stop at Way Beyond Bagels? Have an egg onion for me? and Veggie schmear?"
Despite my respect and admiration of Shuna's work as both a blogger and chef, I had to take her bagel advice with a grain of salt. I was aware of "Way Beyond Bagels," it's that place on the way to my grandmother's, but I wasn't going to waste my Boca Bagel time there; I had to honor my roots and my roots are firmly planted on Glades Road, right near the Turnpike, at the greatest of all Boca bagel joints: Bagelworks (click that link to read my last tribute to Boca's greatest.)
But then Craig was coming from the airport on Wednesday and having had my Bagelworks fix on Tuesday before getting my teeth cleaned by my dad...
(That's me there with my grandmother, my mother, and my future sister-in-law, Tali. Note the drinks: me, fresh squeezed orange juice; grandma, iced tea "very little ice, but cold"; mom, Diet Dr. Brown's Black Cherry soda; and, Tali, coffee.)
...I urged my mom to pick up a few bagels at "Way Beyond Bagels" for Craig's arrival, as well as the rainbow cookies she always buys me when I come home (I'd had "Way Beyond Bagels" rainbow cookies in the past--which I absolutely love--but never their bagels.)
Long story short: mom bought a few egg onion bagels, Craig ate his right on arrival and then on Thanksgiving morning we ate two more. As Shuna raves in her post "Why Florida is New York": they're "delicious like nobody's business."
An egg bagel is like a cross between challah bread and a bagel which means it's that much richer, that much lighter, and that much more flavorful than a normal bagel. Toasting it and spreading it with cream cheese (we didn't have Shuna's veggie shmear, but I'm always wary of cut-up vegetable bits in my cream cheese; I'm a nova spread or scallion cream cheese kind of guy, exclusively) this was a bagel to rival my favorite New York bagels. And doesn't it make sense, as Shuna argues, that Boca should have bagels every bit as good as the bagels in New York? Where do you think all the old Jewish bagel makers move when they retire? My backyard, that's where!
So thanks Shuna for the tip; I won't cede the crown from Bagelworks just yet, but after a few more visits I just might. The egg onion bagel, however, has a new place on my bagel pedestal: it puts all eggless bagels to shame.
