We arrived back in New York to a brutal heat wave and the even more brutal news that H&H Bagels on 80th Street and Broadway had closed down after almost forty years of supplying the perfect ovoid vehicle for the transportation of lox, cream cheese and various condiments to the greedy little fressers of the Upper West Side. Apparently the owner had some holes in his financial reporting.
H&H No More
My memory of H&H is sensory on a number of levels, but aroma topped them all. I used to belong to a gym that was located on the floor above and I would inhale the glorious smells of bagels baking – sesame, onion, rye, poppy seed and the extraordinary, unmatchable Everything Bagel – while I was shvitzing away on the treadmill. Talk about counter-productive.
Ah, well. Now we’ll either have to adapt to the softer, bigger, doughier Zabar’s bagel – which is not really to my taste – not dense enough, more like bread than
bagel – or hunt up a new specimen somewhere.
Absolute bagel
Enter Absolute Bagels on the eastside of Broadway between 107th and 108th Streets – right next to the big fruit and vegetable market. It’s a schlep for me, but I went today, despite the heat, to provide my readers with the all-important first-hand tasting. Well okay, I did it for myself. The result? Fantastic bagel – chewy, crusty, dense, well-coated with the various seeds, onions, etc. And a good price – a buck a bagel.
Maybe we could convince them to deliver?
Absolutely!
try “esa” bagels..just a bit less tha H&H in the bagel category…
@ Jerry – Thanks, but going that far east for a bagel is counter-intuitive. Are there any Jews over there?
The Bagel Hole in Brooklyn. After H&H closed, I had to go looking in my own neighborhood. I’ll bring you one on Sunday.
Thanks, Mike. We did not know about Absolute Bagels. We have been mourning
H & H, not that we even eat bagels that often (being of a certain age) , but we love their presence and their aroma. Welcome Home! How long are you here? xxoo Juliet
… sumpin’ happened there… let’s start again – I’m sure there are bagels to be found that may adequately fill the taste bud void left by the demise of H&H… but there is no way to replace the space/scent/comfort ‘thing’ that it represented… and the memories! Dropping by on a freezing morning slog uptown. Walking on with that warm,chewy, filling lil’ miracle.
Safe Passage H&H.
Mike, didn’t our kids go to visit H&H when they were in kindergarten? Do you have a copy of the photo of them together in the park?
I feel your pain, for I too am a casualty of love lost. A very long time ago, at 81st and York, there was a tiny Hungarian restaurant named Paprika. The owner, always dressed in a tux and the kitchen filled with babushka clad women, I always had the feeling that I was somehow magicly transported back into old Budapest whenever I walked through their door. The food was heavenly and their desserts, well their desserts were to die for. They made a chocolate hazelnut palacsinta that was not of this world and I would often stop late in the evening for my sugar fix night cap. I finished college and moved away for a short time. When I returned, the very first thing on my agenda was a visit to my beloved Paprika. To my Horror, it was replaced by a Chinese restaurant. I was shocked and sickened, I stopped people passing by and asked if they knew what happened to the little Hungarian restaurant. Alas, no one did, and my search for that tasty memory goes on to this day. When I read your blog this morning, I felt that you were trying to convince yourself that you may have stumbled upon a suitable substitute for your beloved “ovid vehicle” but your words rang empty. I wish you well on your quest and I hope you have better luck than I….Is it better to have to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all? Its a question I am still trying to answer some 30 years later…..I heard of an old Hungarian woman who sells palacsinta’s out of a truck in Milwalkee….I’ll let you know
I, too, was dismayed at the demise of H&H. Seeing it standing forlorn, empty, is just all kinds of wrong. It was a favorite spot in the nabe when I lived down there, for sure. RIP H&H!
PS: Welcome home to you and Jill…
@ Bob, René, Juliet, Wynne, Karen and SDH – Empty words, indeed. There will be no replacing H&H – for more reasons than having a vehicle for one’s cream cheese. It was an institution, a harkening back to what was. As René says, a fragrant place to drop by on a freezing morning slog uptown. Like Bob’s beloved Paprika, there will only an aching, a yearning. It’s one of of the biggest problems about life in New York – and in America in general — things change, and they change fast. Not so in Italy. If you loved a little trattoria you stumbled on in 1968, chances are it’ll still be there in 2011 — and run by the same family.
I hate to be the contrarian here (well, not really…), but let’s admit it: H&H was important as a presence, as a symbol of the UWS that once was, and as an aroma. But their bagels? The true bagel is dense and chewy , a little bit of a jaw-breaker; H&H’s was a crusty white bread the size and shape of your head, with a hole punched in it.
The real thing is all but gone from uptown New York (Columbia Hot Bagels, which closed several years ago to make way for a glass-and-steel condo building, was its last purveyor on the west side). But Tal Bagels, with branches both west side and east, has a modern adaptation: the flat bagel, which is fundamentally a very crusty disc with not much at all inside. Layer it with a schmear and a slice of novy, and you will be taken back very nearly to bagel Eden.
@ Dan — I bow to someone older and wiser – even if you’re younger than me. A bagel maven is a bagel maven. I grew up in Baltimore, so what do I know? I’ll try Tal Bagels. I, too, like dense and chewy. I’ll let you know.
How about making your own Mikey? Any great bagel recipe you can share? Can’t find any great bagel here on Maui and too far to fly to NY :)
@ Caroline — a bagel in Maui? Could be a title for a Do Ho song.
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