Tal Bagel Bakery

This morning for breakfast we wanted to try out the closest smoked fish and bagel place to our apartment, which happens to be Tal Bagel Bakery on 1st Avenue. Up until now we have only tried the sturgeon at Barney Greengrass over on the upper west side, which is really good but a bit of a trek. We wanted to see whether we could get anything at all similar without leaving our neighborhood.

We walked in and approached the counter at about 9:00AM, which is apparently just before the breakfast rush because they had at least ten people waiting to take orders behind the counter and only one other customer. We had to back away for a couple of minutes since we wanted to browse the overhead menu for a bit. Clearly the anxious staff was geared toward a clientele that walks in knowing exactly what they want, and wants it fast.

When we were finally finished perusing the choices and had decided what we wanted, I managed to get the attention of one of the staff (once they peg you as a browser you become invisible to them until you do something conspicuous to gain their attention, kind of the same feeling as the weird forehead guy from the subway scene of the movie Ghost).

In order to stay in the Barney Greengrass spirit, I ordered the sturgeon on a pumpernickel bagel with cream cheese, onions and tomatoes. My wife had the lox spread on a sesame seed bagel. We also tried a banana muffin that was billed as fat-free and "no added sugar" (which always leaves me wondering about the baseline sugar level before it counts as "added").

On a side note, it was a bit hard to understand the man behind the counter between the noise level and the fact that there were some language differences. The one thing I could understand clearly is that he kept calling me "boss" after each question (as in, "you want onions on that, boss?"). For some reason this made me strangely uncomfortable, and made it even hard to keep up with the order process since in addition to the noise and other distractions, I had a voice in my head that kept saying "why is he calling you boss? Nobody ever calls you boss. You're not the boss of anything" and so on. I was reminded of a Letterman show segment from a long time ago they called "Stop calling me Chief" where they would interview someone and end every question with "Chief." It had the same unnerving affect in both cases.

Once we had successfully acquired our food, we found a table and sat down to eat. The sturgeon bagel was excellent, and I would definitely get the same thing again. I couldn't exactly compare it to Barney Greengrass since my usual choice there is the scrambled eggs and sturgeon, but in a smoked fish and bagel showdown I would have to say that Tal is easily in the same league. I wonder how sugar- and fat-free the banana muffin actually was, but it was actually pretty good as well.

Next time we will be ready to fire away with an immediate order rather than waiting.