Ahead of National Bagel Day today, I bought everything—every kind of bagel, that is, including the Everything and the Everything Everything—from New Haven’s most celebrated bagelry, Olmo.
Here are my tasting notes for all nine kinds, loosely arranged from simpler to fancier, which is also roughly the order in which I tried them:
Plain
Wonderfully chewy outside. Inside, crumb was closed, for the most part, but not too dense. Mild flavor allowed Olmo’s salty, creamy and lightly funky vegan cream cheese—one option among a dozen “tubs of schmear”—to shine.
Sesame
Seeds across and around—some toasted to a burst and shriveled brown, some still white and plump—crackled and popped with every bite. Overall, nutty, toasty and fatty, with a cooling lift from the schmear.
Poppyseed
Extra fine seeds added little whispers of crumbly texture. Expectedly nutty and earthy. Unexpectedly (and delightfully) vegetal and peppery (though I can’t rule out cross-contamination with other bagels’ toppings). Adding the schmear smothered the finer nuances but lent a welcome balance.
Onion Sea Salt
Bright and briny flavor beautifully incorporated the schmear without succumbing to it. Hundreds of crunchy toasted onion bits laced with glassy panes of salt large enough, relatively speaking, to impress Walter White.
Rosemary
A rosemary syrup, I think, must have been drizzled on after the steam-boiling and before the baking. Extra-bubbled skin was studded with indulgent piles of half-dissolved salt crystals. Dough was flecked with big shards of the headline herb. They’re onto something here.
Za’atar
Finely dusted with the Middle Eastern spice blend, which was anchored by a kind of minty flavor that warmed rather than cooled. Good (and interesting), but I found myself wondering how much more I might like a coarser cut of herbs really packed on.
Cacio e Pepe
“Inspired by our best-selling pasta dish back when we were a sit-down restaurant,” this bagel featuring “a generous amount of black pepper topped with a slice of caramelized provolone cheese” was nevertheless restrained. The pepper took a backseat to the mild savory cheese, which texturally draped the bagel’s chew in a fine crisp sheet.
Everything
Covered like a Memorial Day beach with garlic, poppy, sesame, black sesame and onion. Smoky, tangy, nutty, savory. Brash, but the schmear tamed it well.
Everything Everything
They mean it this time, combining everything in the Everything with “Italian seasoning, herbs de Provence, sea salt, black pepper, cheddar, malt vinegar, Korean chili flake, nori, and tofu bacon bits.” Smoky, tangy, nutty, savory—and spicy, funky, herbal, musky and mineral, all of which the schmear elegantly unified. Though I suspect it is and, as a culinary achievement, should be a lot of people’s favorite, for me this came in second place, just behind the Rosemary and one ahead of the Onion Sea Salt, with every bite tasting, Willy Wonka-style, like a whole multi-course meal.
Which, during a whole nine-course meal of bagels, proved pretty much the perfect ending.
Written and photographed by Dan Mims.
