Bagels are amazing. But you already knew that! What you didn’t know is that a couple of guys in Cleveland think their bagels are better than any of the zillions of bagels in New York. YEP! Some guys in Cleveland and a couple writers at The Wall Street Journal LITERALLY believe that a bagel made in Cleveland is better than any single bagel in the Empire State. And by the way, we’re not talking about some dumb, trendy-ass rainbow bagel bullsh*t. We’re talking straight up, classic, dye-less, round, holey, bagels.
The bagelry in Cleveland is creatively called Cleveland Bagel Co., and it’s owned by Geoff Hardman and Dan Herbst, who decided to start the business over a couple of beers. They work out of the back of a pasta shop, churning out 300 dozen bagels a week. The bagels are boiled in water and malt syrup (come again?) then baked in a convection oven. They’re described as, “a doughy chew that leaves your jaw sore until lunch.” Huh.
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According to the company’s owner, the idea was to make Cleveland the best in the world at something. But that sentiment quickly evolved once it became obvious that, “Cleveland is really hot right now,” as one Cleveland native told The Wall Street Journal. Being host of the Republican National Convention AND champions of the NBA has a lot of people talking about The Land, so it should come as no surprise that the city is currently, “feeling itself” like the Wall Street Journal so aptly points out.
Despite zero culinary background, Hardman and Herbst spent a year developing a bagel people would actually like, a seemingly challenging task considering their H2O resources — the water’s just different there — but, according to The Wall Street Journal, “the quality of water doesn’t matter as much as most people think.”
We’d like to note that although it might not matter “as much as most people think,” it does still matter, and nothing compares to New York bagels except of course New Jersey bagels. Hartman and Herbst refute the fact that New York water produces better bagels and are proud to say that they use Lake Erie water.
While one of the company’s owners dreams of a “bagel empire,” the other is reluctant to agree with customers who say their bagels are the best in the country because he’s a humble Clevelander. Just like LeBron and J.R. Smith.
(Via The Wall Street Journal)
