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by Seth Rogovoy
WILLIAMSTOWN, June 6, 1996 -- After I moved to these parts about a dozen or so years ago, people often asked me if I missed living in New York City.
The answer, of course, was no. What was there to miss? Riding the hot, filthy subways? Having to constantly look over my shoulder every time I ventured out onto Broadway? Paying one-thousand dollars a month for one mouse- and cockroach-infested room -- excuse me, a "garden studio apartment." Living in the world's greatest city and not being able to partake of its splendor because you have to be rich to live a civilized existence in New York?
No, I would say. I don't really miss New York City. Not at all.
Except for one thing. Bagels.
Bagels? Don't they have bagels where you live?
Well, I'd say, there are bagels and there are "bagels." Most of what passes for bagels outside of New York aren't really bagels, but bagel-shaped hard rolls of varying quality and texture, nothing like the real bagels you get in the city.
You see, I lived on the Upper West Side of New York, just a few blocks away from a place called H&H Bagels. H&H produces what I and other connoisseurs consider to be the perfect bagel. The ur- bagel. The Platonic ideal of bagels. The bagel to end all bagels. THE bagel.
Bagels from H&H boast a delightful consistency: dense yet chewy, with a crust that is clearly distinct from the inside yet doesn't offer too much resistance. Their flavor offers a delicately balanced dance between sweet and salty. Yeah yeah yeah, they taste great with cream cheese and lox or whatever you want to put on them, and yeah yeah yeah, they come in all varieties. But the true test of a great bagel is if it can be fully enjoyed and appreciated eaten just as is, with no toppings in or on it, just as a plain bagel.
If you stand outside H&H on Broadway and 80th Street, you will observe that virtually no one leaves the store not already chewing on a bagel, reveling in the exquisite pleasure of a freshly-baked, still-warm bagel that says, I am here, I am bagel, I am good, eat me.
So yes, I'd say to my friends, I miss bagels. I would especially say this to friends visiting from New York, so they would be sure to bring me care packages from H&H. Plain, onion, sesame, and poppy seed only. No cinnamon raisin, pumpernickel, spinach or pizza bagels, please. No Cajun, pesto, sun-dried tomato or olive bagels, please. Those aren't bagels. Those are fruity caricatures. Those are effete impostors. Those are would-be bagels.
Wrapped carefully in brown paper bags and then in plastic bags, bagels from H&H can survive the trip from Manhattan to the Berkshires relatively intact. Put right into the freezer, then thawed one at a time and warmed slowly in a toaster-oven, you can hardly tell the difference between these and the freshly-bought bagels people stand around chewing on the corner of Broadway and 80th. Another thing about H&H bagels -- they're sturdy!
So for the first half-decade or so of my Berkshire exile, I lived from visit to visit from friends and relatives who hand-delivered bags of bagels from H&H.
Then one day about four or five years ago, I happened into Andy and Stuart Shatken's Store at Five Corners in South Williamstown and bought a bagel. I took a bite. Hmm, I thought, this is a pretty good bagel. As a matter of fact, this a pretty great bagel.
How could it be? I had never in my life tasted a bagel as good as an H&H bagel, and now, right here in my adopted hometown, I happened on a bagel as good as the ones from H&H.
"Who makes these bagels?" I asked Andy, perhaps with a slight accusatory tone.
"They're from H&H in New York," she answered. Right then and there, I died and went to bagel heaven.
I am now raising two children in a land far away from the home of bagels and the culture from which they sprang. But I am content in the knowledge that in addition to trees, clean air, glistening lakes and all the advantages that accrue to those living in a small, New England college-town, my children are being raised on H&H.
Do I miss New York? Whatever is there to miss? We can get H&H right here.
(This column originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on June 6, 1996. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1996. All rights reserved.)
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