Can I Get A…Bagel!?
October 12, 2006 by bec 
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Can I Get A…?!
A bi-weekly column dedicated to finding the best food and foodstuffs in DC. According to us.
This week: Can I Get A…Bagel!?
It’s a perpetual hunt for many of us - Jew and goy - to find the best bagel in DC. I have been searching since I arrived from New York in September of 2003, and I’m still not sure I’m satisfied. Then again - I’m a displaced Brooklyn Jew - could I ever really be satisfied? (Don’t answer that.)
About fifty people were asked and a lot - I swear - responded. Here are this week’s results of best place to get a bagel in DC. According to us. In percentages.
Georgetown Bagelry - 46%
So’s Your Mom - 39%
Firehook - 15%
It’s hard to tell based on these percentages, but GB beat out SYM by a schmear. Votes for GB and SYM were neck and neck - but GB gained over SYM in the end. Many submitted reasons for their preferences. SYM was favored by one brightyoungthing “because it is neighbourhoody and has the best fresh avocado,” while someone else reasoned: “I mean Jesus (not in an anti-Jew way kind of Jesus), [G'town Bagelry has] Bacon Horseradish cream cheese!” And although one BYT user recently spotted a roach in the GB (don’t tell the wasps!), he even voted for it. You can also get a pretty decent slice of pizza there.
Don’t be fooled into thinking it’s as good as what you get in NY (I have to say that, required by 34ab section IV of the New York City Native Law), but it’s not a bad option.
BYT ME received some other DC bagel shout-outs in the process of gathering these scores:
Heller’s Bakery
AND - I kid you not, one brightyoungthing even suggested:
FedEx’ed bagels from H&H
See! I am not the only crazy Jew out here!
love,
bec, your jaded palate;
jaded so you don’t have to be
P.S. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention one particularly intriguing solicitation from a certain BYT regular, which I’m not sure had anything to do with voting for bagels, but was interesting nonetheless: “Wanna take a ride on my bagel train baby? I’ll take you all the way to Jerusalem, complimentary cream cheese.” Hmmm…I’ll think about it.
I was only (half) joking about H&H, but they are good bagels. I usually just get mine from Whole Foods, or bring back large quantities from the Bagelry on E. 86th St….
October 12, 2006 at 11:57 amhm, I wonder who that certain BYT regular was?
October 15, 2006 at 1:54 pmi may be a catholic from new jersey, but i know that yonah shimmel’s kinishery has the best latkes ever.
October 20, 2006 at 4:39 pm
As a Jew from Long Island (where real bagels are made and bagel stores are 24 hours),I feel your pain. I know real bagels and there not much that compares. Never had Georgetown or So’s Your Mom bagels but Firehook’s are crapppy. Heller’s really has good doughy bagels and they are 2 blocks from my house, which is good on Sunday mornings.
October 12, 2006 at 10:26 am