comme çi, comme ça

Luckily, blog posts don't go stale as quickly as baked goods* because I actually went to St.-Viateur Bagel last Saturday.  I made the trip after an, ummmm, interesting softball practice.  Team sports are a great way to meet other young professionals, right?  Not this time, friends.  I wouldn't use the terms young or professional to describe this team.  How would I describe them?  Let's just say that one would be unable to find a full set of teeth among the team members.  Okay, okay, saying that they weren't professionals probably isn't fair.  There was this one guy, Sammy, who was definitely high on some sort of stimulant.  It seemed like he'd done his fair share of drugs before, so I'll go ahead and call Sammy a professional drug user.  Great. 


I left the softball practice feeling a little hungry and a lot disappointed.  Could there be a better place to eat my feelings than St.-Viateur?  The internet told me that Fairmount and St.-V are the bagel meccas of Montreal, and since eating a Fairmount bagel was like eating an angel's halo, I knew St.-V couldn't be bad.  I was right...  It wasn't bad.  But it wasn't great, either.  As the title suggests, it was just so-so.  

St.-Viateur Bagel gets its name from the street on which it's located, and that street is busy on Saturday afternoons.  There were tons of people on the sidewalks, and I passed a number of cute cafes with patios that were absolutely packed.  Given all the foot traffic, I figured the line for a bagel would wrap around the block, but I arrived to find not a single person in the shop.  Some young kid in an Italy hat was working the cash register and told me that there were only three bagel options: plain, sesame seed, and poppy seed.  I asked for a sesame seed bagel with cream cheese and was told that my total would be $1.25.  The kid put a knife and a bagel in a bag, took my $1.25, and told me not to forget my cream cheese.  I looked in the cooler to my right, spotted the little individual packets, and went on my merry way.  Strangely enough, I missed the hairnet lady from Fairmount.  Sure, she didn't have the most stellar oral hygiene, but at least she smiled enough for me to notice.  Anyway, this mission is about bagels, not service.  

Truth be told, I can get on board with the idea of offering only three varieties.  Why bother adding a bunch of different flavors when you've already got a good thing going?**  I'm just not sure I enjoy what St.-V has got going.  After struggling to cut my bagel with the plastic knife, I found my lap covered in  25986 sesame seeds... give or take.  The same thing happened when I put on the cream cheese.  Anyway, I finally got to eat the bagel, and it was good.  The outside wasn't as firm and tasty as the Fairmount bagel (see below), but you could taste that it had been cooked in a wood-burning oven.  The inside was a little lighter and sweeter, which some people might prefer (but I did not).

Fairmount bagel on the Left and St.-V bagel on the Right

Despite the holier store name, St.-V only ranks 6.5/10.  If you're in the area on a nice day, I'd check out one of the cute cafes with the bustling patios.

*exception: fluffy, marshmallow-like wonder bread, which has a shelf life 2x that of a blog post
**confession: Since my trip to St.-V, I've gone back to Fairmount.  I ordered a chocolate chip bagel the second time around, and it wasn't nearly as good as the all-dressed bagel. 

fairmount - je ne sais pas

What don't I know?  I don't know if any bagel in Montreal is going to compare to the bagel I had today.  My prayers were answered when I took my first bite of that little honey-boiled, wood-fired, cream cheese-covered piece of heaven... mmmm. Okay, I'm getting ahead of myself here.  Let's start from the beginning.  

Why Fairmount?

Fairmount was actually the first bagel bakery in Montreal, so it's only fitting that they should provide my first bagel.  After seeing throngs of Hasidic Jews walking down Saint-Viateur last night, I was tempted to try St-Viateur Bagels first, but I stuck with my original plan.  After all, the man who started Fairmount was Isadore Shlafman, and with a name like that, your bagel has to be good.

What's the difference between a Montreal-style bagel and an NYC-style bagel?

New York bagel:  

  Dough - malt, salt and no sugar

  Preparation - boiled in water and baked in a standard oven

  Result - puffy with a moist crust

Montreal bagel: 

  Dough - malt, sugar and no salt

  Preparation - boiled in honey-sweetened water and baked in a wood-fired oven

  Result - smaller, crunchier and sweeter than NYC counterpart 

Enough with the lessons.  Tell me about your bagel.

Too poor cheap to spend $2.75 on the bus, I started walking toward the Plateau.

After a nice little stroll down Avenue du Parc, I made a right onto Fairmount Ouest and eventually reached the gates of heaven door of Fairmount Bagel Bakery.  

I walked inside and the first thing I saw (well, other than the lady in the hairnet working the cash register) was a huge, probably 3.5"x2"x1", slab of dough and a man hand-rolling the bagels.  There was another man working behind the counter, too.  He was pulling bagels from boiling water, topping them, putting them on wood planks, and sliding them into the wood-burning oven.  When he wasn't putting fresh bagels in the oven, he was taking half-baked ones out, flipping them over by hand, and putting them back to complete their transformation from dough to delicious.

The standard Montreal bagel flavors are plain, sesame seed and poppy seed, but I love a good everything bagel, so I opted for an "all dressed" bagel (onion, garlic, caraway, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, and coarse salt) with cream cheese.

Do you know how much this bagel set me back?  $2.75.  Yeah, that's right.  Bus fare.  I'm not kidding.  I almost reached over the counter and kissed the lady when she told me my total, but it looked like she hadn't brushed her teeth in a while, so I decided against it.* 

Instead of heading to a nearby park (on Saint-Laurent), I sat down on the bench in front of Fairmount and started chowing down.  My only complaint is that there may have been just a tad too much cream cheese for my taste.  In regard to the bagel itself, however, I have no complaints.  

All the stuff that was sprinkled on the bagel had a nice little char from the oven, and the coarse salt definitely balanced out the sweetness of the bagel, which lingered just long enough to be enjoyable rather than overwhelming.  The outside was nice and firm (not chewy), and the inside was soft and dense.  Okay, my description isn't doing this thing justice.  It was delicious.  Probably the best bagel I've ever had.  Leaving some room for the competitors, I'll give it an 8/10. 

* Khoa, you know how you said that everyone in Montreal is hot, even the cashiers at McDonalds?  Apparently Fairmount didn't get the memo.  

   

Bonjour!

So, I have arrived in Montreal, and I am ready to begin my quest for Montreal's greatest Bagel. As the title suggests, the details of my carbohydrate canvassing will be served up with a little side of snark because, let's be honest, we'll both be bored with a bunch of bagel photos. Now let us take a moment to pray for the success of my mission -

Our baker, who art in Montreal,

wood-fired be thy beguel.

Thy customers come.

They will have one,

with lox as well as cream cheese.

Give us this day our daily bread,

and forgive us our carb loading,

as we forgive those on the Atkins diet.

Lead us straight into breakfast,

and deliver us our meal.

For thine is honey-boiled, seasame-sprinkled,

and glorious with everything.

Amen.

Tomorrow I will visit Fairmount Bagel.*
* Shout out to Kevin for inspiring this little blogging endeavor