This bare-bones bagel shop is a favorite of Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center employees. Poppy and whole wheat bagels are favorites, and nothing makes a better breakfast than the dark and slightly sweet pumpernickel bagel thickly spread with egg salad.

This shop was started by Andrew Martinez and Ashley Dikos in 2017 to address a lack of great bagels in Harlem. The result is a shop with bagels that have a crisp exterior and chewy inside, made the traditional way with a 24-hour fermentation, brief boil, and bake. All the classic spreads are available, as well as bagel sandwiches like the Andrew — featuring egg, sausage, bacon, Vermont maple syrup, and scallion cream cheese.

Come lunchtime, this barn of a bagel bakery boasts lines that trail out the door, the customers eager for a taste of its large and reasonably priced bagels, often delivered still warm. The bagels at Absolute are larger than average and glossy from their boil. The bright orange egg bagel is a favorite, and so is the everything bagel, best spread with the salty and smoky whitefish salad for a flavor explosion.

This bagel shop has been a Queens staple since opening in 1981. To date, it serves some of our favorite bagels across the five boroughs. “It’s what you do with the water. It’s how much water you put in, it’s how much, when you proof, [when] you let in the air,” co-owner Scott Spellman told Eater in 2022. “Those are the things that are not talked enough about... It’s those techniques that make our bagels what they are.” 

Locals rave about the bagels at this Astoria institution, and New Yorkers make pilgrimages from other boroughs to snag them. The range of bagels is vast. On a recent visit Asiago and jalapeno-sesame were available, and the roster of cream cheeses and other miscellaneous toppings is just as robust, sometimes with Korean flourishes.

Despite its name, Brooklyn Bagel doesn’t have a Kings County location — instead there are five spread across Queens and Manhattan. The Astoria outpost is well-liked and frequently boasting long lines for their gigantic, airy bagels. But the place also serves a mini bagel, probably about the size bagels were a century ago. Also note the rotating stunt specials like gingerbread, seven grain, and sundried tomato.

Lox, nova, and smoked salmon aren’t the same thing — and Tal Bagels is the place to find out how they differ, with a comprehensive menu that boasts all three. With six locations across Manhattan and too many cream cheeses to count, Tal has earned itself a reputation as one of New York’s favorite bagel shops for its hot bagels and fast service.

This relative newcomer to Kips Bay (in bagel years) has become a reliable brunch spot and crowds form on the weekends. It offers a broad range of bagels and spreads for its small size, including salt and garlic in the former category, and strawberry, olive, and lox in the latter. Bagels are big and of average squishiness.

Open since 1996, Murray’s was born out of a desire for a superior neighborhood bagel shop in Greenwich Village. The result is a space with large, but light, bagels with a crackly crust and modest interior chew. Beyond standard cream cheeses, cured fish, and egg fillings, Murray’s specialty is substantial meat and poultry sandwiches, made from salami, hot corned beef, chicken cutlets, and just about any deli meat or fish salad one can think of.

Apollo Bagels is a minimalist bagel shop. There’s nowhere to sit and only three kinds of bagels available (plain, sesame, and everything). One thing about running a bagel shop that way? It takes a great product. The bagels are sour and bubbly, with a nice, crunchy exterior. The options for toppings include tomato, cream cheese, and peanut butter and jam — so if you’re looking for a bacon, egg, and cheese, you’ll have to try Tompkins Square Bagels a block away.

Bagel purists may not like this place in the East Village, with its rainbow of cream cheese options, but it has a devoted following at this and other locations for a reason: a massive variety of menu items that’ll satisfy any appetite. It is often the only bagel place out-of-town friends have heard of, and expect to find the latest food fads executed in bagel form.

This Greenpoint corner bagel shop has a history dating back to 1977, but you’d never know it for the postmodern fixtures, which make you feel like you’re ordering bagels on the Starship Enterprise. So step up to the plasma ordering kiosk and opt for a plain bagel with green-olive cream cheese, which is absolutely delicious.

Head for Forest Hills Bagel for a more comfortable bagel experience. The interior is laid out like a diner, and an opulent counter display offers a large range of flavored cream cheeses and their surrogates, including low-fat dairy spreads and those made from whipped tofu. The bagels remain the focus, however, with a very nice cinnamon raisin for sweet bagel lovers, and poppy and sesame bagels that don’t stint on the seeds.

This East Williamsburg spot can’t decide if it wants to be a bodega or a bagel bakery. Luckily, the bagels are damn good in all the usual permutations, which are alternated, so that the selection on any given day may be limited to six. This will help you make a decision. The lox and scallion cream cheese are a particular delight, while the everything pumpernickel offers a bagel-world oddity, even if it’s a little sweet.

Bake Shop is Bushwick’s hippie-style hangout, embracing all the latest bagel fads, including gluten-free bagels, in addition to its roster of sandwiches, breakfasts, cookies, and birthday cakes. The bagels have a rustic quality as if they have been flown here from Eastern Europe a century ago, and are more browned than average, in line with current trends. The everything bagel — decorated with a straw-like topping — is a favorite.

This small chain of Brooklyn bagel shops turns out bagels with lots of chew, perfect for an egg and cheese sandwich or good enough on their own. Breakfast sandwiches are available in myriad forms, including those with hash browns, turkey bacon, and chipotle cream cheese. Expect a line that goes out the door on weekends, with a selection of inventive bagels — egg everything, pumpernickel everything — visible in a row of stainless steel baskets, regularly replenished.

This bagel shop sandwiched between Prospect Park and Green-Wood Cemetery, ensconced in a double storefront, produces one of the city’s broadest range of bagel flavors and a correspondingly large array of cream cheeses. One of our favorites is the egg everything bagel, which enriches its multiple herbal flavors with egg; another is the cinnamon raisin bagel with a sweetened cinnamon crust on the outside, a combo that can reasonably be termed a dessert bagel.

This Bay Ridge bakery offers a bagel so big and bulbous, that the holes have nearly disappeared — one is almost enough to be shared by two. The shop furnishes views of the nearby Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, and there’s a park across the street where you can eat your purchases in fine weather. (It also sells subs on rolls baked on the premises.) Its most unusual product is the french toast bagel, which is sweet, sticky, and covered in powdered sugar.