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.
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