Food

A Bagel With Shmear And Lox In NYC Can Cost You Anywhere From $7 To $24

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By Shira Feder January 3, 2019

From budget-friendly to big-ticket bagels, tapping into the Jewish ancestral tradition of chowing down on a circular carb can get a little complicated. But we’re here to help. This chart takes a look at the top bagel shops in New York and examines how much a good old-fashioned bagel with lox and a schmear will run you.

Some reveals? At a gnarly $24.00, Sadelle’s bagels are not the ones you’re going to grab before getting on the subway. The most budget-friendly bagel award would have to go to Kossar’s, where you can dine like royalty for $7. Places like Zucker’s and Murray’s rest squarely in the middle, offering New Yorkers a taste of tradition for around $10 dollars.

And why all the price discrepancies?

According to Serious Eat’s Bagelnomics, you might be paying a premium for that shmear. Not to mention that the salty New York birthright of lox ain’t cheap. A pound of lox can cost anywhere from $30-50 dollars in New York. Pro tip: one thing that unites hipsters, hasidim and other lox fans is Greenpoint’s Fish Fridays, a cash-only market in which supplier Acme Smoked Fish (of Zabar’s, Russ and Daughters and Shelsky’s) offers their wares at a substantial discount.

And let’s not forget that we’re in New York, home of the $1,000 bagel, so of course there stark class divides rooted in our bagel shopping habits.

And of course, picking a bagel du jour comes down to personal preference. Do you like your bagels chewy? Hard? Steamed? Toasted? Festooned with poppyseeds? It’s a buyer’s market out there and the bagels await.

Shira Feder is a writer. She’s at feder@forward.com and @shirafeder

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