Chewing Over Change: Finding a New UWS Go-To Bagel Spot in a Post-Absolute Bagels World

By Tracy Zwick

Though the public, and public officials, are lobbying to keep Absolute Bagels a going concern, there’s nothing absolute about the iconic Upper West Side bagel shop’s future. The question that blew up all my group text chats, which felt like trauma-survivor groups last week, was: “Where do we go now for bagels?”

I and a fellow UWS journalist took a walk and nosh this past snowy solstice Saturday through the UWS’s bagel corridor – Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues between West 72nd and about 86th Streets. My friend shared my boiled bread blues, but brought to the table, or counter, more of an openness to the UWS’s non-Absolute options.

Here’s what we found. The opinions expressed are our own.

We began where much of UWS food culture begins: Zabar’s.

In my group texts, Zabar’s came up again and again. David Solis-Cohen, a decades-long Absolute enthusiast, said he’d reacquainted himself with Zabar’s bagels in recent days. “Unfortunately, I will not be going back, at least not for a bagel,” he reported. “I got one that was still warm from the oven and it was just a huge disappointment. So sad.”

My journalist friend pronounced the plain bagel “gluey.” We asked two groups of patrons in Zabar’s Cafe how they’d rate the bagels against Absolute’s, but they were out-of-towners and clueless. They’d never tasted an Absolute Bagel and perhaps never would. “So sad,” indeed.

Our next stop was Kossar’s on 72nd Street and West End Avenue, which was commended to me by erstwhile Absolute devotee Noa Rafimayeri of West 105th Street.

Robin Aronow, founder of the UWS’s School Search NYC and a member of one of my bagel group chats, had already announced that “at $1.90, Kossar’s bagels are bigger than Absolute’s and close, though of course, not as good.” We found Kossar’s plain bagel fresh and airy, with my pal praising its crust. But he concluded it had “an odd hollowness” at its heart, and longed for a denser bread.

Just three blocks away, Zucker’s Bagels was new to both of us. As an Absolute absolutist – I served their bagels at my son’s bris 24 years ago – I recognized some differences immediately.  Absolute never offered shrimp-and-sausage gumbo, like Zucker’s, or “topped latkes” or collabs, and they sure didn’t pipe in Of Monsters and Men or Jim Croce-style folk rock. As for the bagels, Zucker’s plain was a little bit sweet, but it had a nice gloss and satisfying doughiness. So far, it was our favorite.    

PopUp Bagels on Columbus and 76th Street popped up in every one of my bagel-inflected group texts. A small-ish, Westport, CT-created bagel didn’t sound like a natural Absolute heir, but we went in ready to be convinced. One thing the two bagelries shared was immediately clear: an inefficiently managed line. While the bagels were the best of the day for us – warm, chewy, moist – we were frustrated that we couldn’t buy a single bagel. At PopUp, you’re required to purchase “3 + a schmear” for $13 at a minimum. Shmear options include plain and scallion cream cheese, along with rotating “limited edition” flavors – currently peppermint fudge cream cheese and garlic rosemary butter. For an Absolute purist, those toppings are a sacrilege. But if you’re looking for a trendy bagel that tastes good and can double as TikTok content, this is your best UWS bet.

We were both familiar with nearby Orwashers donuts and sandwiches, which earned high marks. But we hadn’t tried the bagels. They’re all sourdough and come in four varieties: plain, sesame, multigrain, and everything. We stuck with the plain, so we could fairly compare it to the others we’d sampled. It’s a solid offering with no obvious flaws, but no magic either.

Next up was Modern Bread & Bagel, a kosher and gluten-free franchise at Columbus & 83rd that’s favored by Jerry and Jessica Seinfeld and received a lotta love in one of my group chats. “Love the bagels, especially the sesame and everything!” said a connoisseur who’s lived in the neighborhood for a quarter century. We hadn’t considered that Modern would be closed for Shabbat when we arrived Saturday afternoon, so we weren’t able to sample the goods. If you’ve got Modern opinions, please add them to the comments. We had the same issue at Bagels & Co., another kosher bagel joint on Amsterdam and 79th Street.

Tal Bagels on Broadway between 90th and 91st was the clear choice for Melissa Bachner of West 91st Street, whose family has long enjoyed their steamy, thin-crusted bagels. Though Bachner conceded that she and her husband “were never Absolute Bagel people,” so she couldn’t compare. Perfectly serviceable, these bagels left no lasting impression on me. We headed north.

Absolute dominated NYC bagel life, and it had a particularly outsized influence on bagel culture above 100th Street. But it’s not exactly a bagel desert uptown with Absolute gone. Wu + Nussbaum, Super Nice, and Silver Moon all offer bagels. In my circles, longtime UWSer Dennis Adler’s views reflected the majority of opinions on Wu + Nussbaum: “Nice variety, but the bagels are just okay.” The other two outfits sell bagels as secondary offerings to their specialty baked goods. Moving on.

Yes, it’s outside of the conventional boundaries of the UWS, but Bo’s Bagels on 116th Street near Frederick Douglass Boulevard in Harlem was nonetheless repeatedly mentioned in my chats as a natural Absolute successor.

When I walked in on Sunday morning, I instantly saw why. It’s a bagel shop, not a bakery, not a trend; and its smells and mise-en-scène evoke a contemporized Absolute. From the counter service and beverage case to the handful of informal tables, from the eye-level muffins to the tubs of cream cheeses and plastic-wrapped lox, Bo’s felt like home to an Absolute orphan. While Bo’s accepts credit cards, which Absolute notoriously refused, they offer a cash discount. Unlike Absolute, you can order online for pickup at Bo’s, and there are other concessions to modernity, including a gluten-free biscuit and non-dairy butter. The bagel range is more expansive than Absolute’s was, with staples like Egg, Plain, Pumpernickel and Everything, but also signature flavors including Za’atar, Black Russian (pumpernickel with onions & sesame seeds) and 3CBO (cheddar, asiago & jack cheeses). The line was convivial and manageable (an under-five-minute wait). The counter staff was neighborly and agile.

What about the bagels? “If I closed my eyes, I might have thought I was tasting Absolute,” Aronow said of the Black Russian. I brought four of Bo’s classically-sized bagels home to share with two Absolute-loving college students on winter break. One, Julia Stern of Acton, MA., pointed out the inconsistency in density of Bo’s bagels across flavors. She pronounced the plain bagel cakey, and the cinnamon raisin light on raisins with a rubbery casing. The other, my daughter, had just two words for the Black Russian: “Yum. Perfect.”

There are absolutely other options. Barney Greengrass, the “century-old bastion of Jewish culture” on Amsterdam Avenue is renowned for its fish. But their bagels rated as mid with my admittedly limited focus group. “Sort of bready as opposed to chewy,” opined Karla Silverman. The current owner, Gary Greengrass, acknowledged to a patron who lives on nearby West 88th Street that his bagels were inferior to Absolute’s, but scoffed at any comparison to nearby Broad Nosh, the bagel purveyor on Broadway and 86th Street.

H&H is another storied New York bagel name. Dan Levine, a professional musician living on West 84th Street, recently sampled them. “Nothing compared to Absolute,” was his sad assessment. Bagel Talk, which has had its own issues with the Department of Health, and Pick-A-Bagel on 61st Street & 11th Avenue failed to register much notice in my milieu. Please add your thoughts on these or any UWS bagelries to the comments.

There are those former Absolute denizens who are willing to go farther afield, like documentary filmmaker Amy Schatz of West 110th Street, who says she’ll order bagels from Montreal now for special occasions. Matthew Futterman of West 114th Street ordered Utopia bagels from Fresh Direct last week. “They were fine,” was his dispirited take.

Abstinence is, of course, an extreme option. “Maybe I’ll just wait until they replace Absolute,” said Ariel Backenroth of West 106th Street. “I didn’t have a decent bagel for 20 years when I lived in San Francisco.” Backenroth doesn’t believe in traveling for bagels. “The entire point is getting them fresh and eating them within 20 minutes.”

Rather than mourning or forbearance or anointing an Absolute replacement, longtime customer Stephanie Mortimore, principal piccolo with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, is giving her husband a homemade “bagel kit” for Christmas. She’s laminating the New York Times recipe and packaging it with bread flour, everything seasoning, a bagel slicer, and a dough cutter. She lives on 106th Street, just one block from the now-defunct Absolute. But if this takes, her new favorite bagel could come from even closer to home – her own kitchen. And no line.

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