When does a food trend evolve into a local fixture? It dawned on me that this has happened with bagels in New Orleans during a recent trip to New York City. For once, in the American heartland of bagels, I felt no need to have one. I knew my cravings were well handled back home in New Orleans, and that’s new.
A city fiercely proud of its own food traditions has been more openly embracing those from elsewhere, and throwing its food zeal into them. That’s led to a range of bagels in different styles with a baseline of high quality, mirroring the city’s recent good fortune of fine pizza.
Start with Flour Moon Bagels just off the Lafitte Greenway in Mid-City, and helpfully right next door to a brewery taproom, Skeeta Hawk.
Before the first swipe of scallion cream cheese goes on, Flour Moon bagels are beauties. The shiny surface has a slight pull and pliant stretch over the soft interior – the golden mean people look for in a proper bagel.
That proper bagel has long been a calling card of Stein’s Deli in the Garden District and Laurel Street Bakery, not on Laurel Street anymore of course, but on Broad. But these early outposts have so much more company in the bagel game now.
Bayou Bagel Company is making them with Louisiana flavors, including a wonderful muffuletta spread, and making them available on grocery store shelves. At the farmers market there’s Leo’s Bread bagels and Small Mart in the Marigny fields a proper bagel too.
But not coincidentally, a hub of bagels is now in orbit around the Uptown campus of Tulane University, where a sizeable slice of the student body come from the Northeast and Jewish families – people who know a proper bagel. They flock to Humble Bagel on Freret Street and the newer Shug’s Bagels on Maple Street, a faithful recreation of a New York bagel shop right down to the coffee cups and Taylor ham breakfast sandwiches. Shug’s is even making late night bagels for the dorm lifestyle.
There is enough range in bagel styles to cement loyalties and fuel arguments, and that’s a sure sign that something is part of the New Orleans food conversation.
