Winners For

Best Bagel

Perhaps the only thing bagels and barbecue have in common is that top-notch versions of both are rare in Seattle. But just as savvy 'cue aficionados know to visit Kau Kau in the International District or Bitterroot in Ballard to get their fill of smoked and/or roasted meats, bagel connoisseurs flock by the dozen (and for the dozen) to The Bagel ...

This market, featuring all manner of Jewish delicacies, truly lives up to its name. In one deli case, a baker sets out rainbow marzipan bars and rugelach in apricot, berry, and chocolate. Nearby, an employee doles out servings of smoked fish. Bagels are still the hallmark, though — they're baked here hourly, so the smell of the vaguely sweet, ar...

Our theory is this: The best bagels are made the old-fashioned way, meaning yeast-risen, boiled, and baked on wooden planks in an oven with rotating shelves. That's not how it's done at the new-fangled bagel chains, which skip the boiling altogether in favor of a light mist while baking. That process leads to soft, light crusts instead of crisp,...

This Miami Beach mainstay has an in-house water filtration system designed to duplicate New York-style H20. And whatever the case, it works. Winner of Best Bagels in 2011, these treats are crisp on the outside and doughy on the inside.

This pint-size emporium serves bagels, bialys, and other eats in a snug little strip mall. (Bialy are round, doughy rolls, similar to bagels, sans hole.) Reasonable prices and fresh eats keep Palmetto Bay's cravings under control.

Winner of Best Bagels in 2010, this North Miami standby hand-rolls, -boils, and -bakes 17 varieties, including poppy seed, oat bran, salt, honey whole wheat, and many others. It offers other deli faves too, including rugalach, black-and-white cookies, salads, and pastries.

This old-school-style bakery is popular among former New Yorkers in the Aventura area. Lauded for its friendly owners and classic atmosphere, Bagel Cover generates lots of buzz for its bagels too.

Popular with the senior-citizen set and those desperately seeking nova and lox, Mo's is an Aventura standby. Besides its ever-popular bagel selection and assorted trappings of any good Jewish deli, the pastrami on rye and corned beef earn rave reviews.

This cozy little deli cooks hand-rolled, -boiled, and baked bagels for the hungry masses. Owner David Cohen has run the joint for more than 20 years, and little has changed since its 1989 inception.

This family-owned and -operated outpost's bagels are so stellar that it wholesales 'em to nearby delis such as the Original Lots of Lox. This place has a seriously loyal following in Kendall for its fresh-baked bagels and flavored schmears, so expect a packed house.

This fast and friendly joint serves huge bagels in a whopping 25 different flavors. The massive selection includes guava, spinach 'n' Swiss, sunflower, pumpkin, Asiago, and the popular French toast. Homemade cream cheese comes in flavors such as honey-almond, strawberry, scallion, and garlic-herb.

A favorite among UM students and Gables breakfast hounds, this constantly busy bagel den serves the usual suspects -- but better. The cinnamon-raisin, everything, poppy, pumpernickel, sesame, salt, egg, and others are soft, dense, and delicious. And for transplanted purists, there are smoked fish and black-and-white cookies.

This long-term resident, owned by a husband-and-wife team, won Best Bagels in this year's "Best of Miami" issue. Everything's done the old-fashioned way, and it shows. Bagels are hefty and crisp, and come in all the crucial flavors. They also stock Boar's Head deli cold cuts and Dr. Brown's sodas to round out that authentic experience.

Many a doubting East Coast transplant has been dragged to this cheery little Scottsdale eatery only to become a believer in its real-deal New York bagels. Since 1987 and with roots in its original locations in Chicago (Touhy Ave.) and New York (Jerome Ave.), the restaurant's family recipes have been the foundation to making bagels the old-fashio...

Hot Bagel Shop is a true hole-in-the-wall, as any good bagel shop should be. New Jersey natives opened the store more than 25 years ago, and it's been pumping out fresh, crisp and perfectly doughy New York-style bagels ever since. Don't expect a lavish dining experience; besides the one or two tables in the parking lot, this counter-service shop...

We worried in 2011 that the Pratzel's dynasty was over. Turns out we were right to fret. Though Jon Mills managed to resuscitate the area's only kosher bakery (much to his credit), the life-support span didn't last through 2012. One might argue that Pratzel's demise earlier this month was good news for multiyear "Best of St. Louis" honoree the B...

Having a bagel boiled is the best way to make it delicious—otherwise, it's just bread with a hole in it. East Coast Bagels does it right, offering flavors such as pizza, cheese jalapeño, plain, everything, cheese and onion, garlic—all of them chewy yet soft, toasted and yeasty, and concentrated in its particular flavor. Add a multitude of sandwi...

Wood-burning ovens have been spitting out pizzas for as long as good food has been in existence, and in fact the oven at Logan Square’s Reno was designed to follow suit, but in a genius twist of cultures, it now adds smoky, chewy bagels with just an edge of char to its daily routine. These artisan bagels are not your standard lumps of dense, gum...

Please, no one throw tomatoes at us for giving the best bagel award to a vegan bakery. Because the fact that Mud Pie is 100 percent vegan is what makes their delicious bagels all the more impressive. Great bagels are hard to come by in this part of the country, so one without all the bad stuff is worth seizing.

You'll have to venture out toward Dulles to get there, but that journey won't be nearly as long as that of Chutzpah Deli's bagels, which arrive from New York City's H&H Bagels and are then baked in-store daily.

Rockville Pike can be an intimidating obstacle en route to bagel heaven, but this strip mall standby is worth the trip every time. Fresh bagels are churned out at a near-constant rate, and the hoopla over the tantalizing salt bagels is well-founded. Grab a freezer pack of Bagel City's pizza bagels for home.

The bagels at Angie and Lee Greenberg's Rockville Pike joint are plump and delicious enough on their own, but they also house some of the best bagel sandwiches the area has to offer. Like the Empire: A toasted onion bagel that holds sliced roast beef, cheddar cheese and horseradish mayo in delectable balance; or the Cheese Please, which layers g...

This humble bagelry occupies a spot along one of Bethesda's most well-heeled streets. It also has a tendency to out-duel its across-the-street neighbor, Georgetown Cupcake, for longest line on the weekend. Those willing to wait are rewarded with a crunchy, glistening exterior that conceals the chewy goodness within. Order yours toasted with roas...

If you can tolerate (or are among) the hordes of hungover college students occupying this College Park staple during the proverbial morning after, you'll find bagels that measure up well to Big Apple standards. Need proof? Thousands of the university's undergraduates hail from the New York/New Jersey area, and from what we've seen, they like the...

If only political pundit George Will had known about the Georgetown Bagelry, tucked at one end of the Kenwood Station shopping center, he surely would have been more tolerant of the "angry anarchy" he saw in the parking lot and described in a 2009 column about the agitated state of the nation's Prius drivers. Our political commentary? They were ...

This Arlington favorite serves up plus-sized bagels that, while a bit on the doughy side, get the job done in a neighborhood lacking in options beyond Cosi and Bruegger's. The long line may be off-putting, but the service is efficient and, at times, reminiscent of a certain "Seinfeld" soup purveyor, meaning you'll be enjoying your bagel in no time.

A Kenny & Zuke’s bagel with cream cheese and house-cured gravlax—“an acid trip of Omega3’s,” the shop’s website calls the combo—is authentic enough to please even the most stringent bagel purists. Each chewy, crusty ring is rolled by hand, proofed 36 hours, boiled with malt and sugar, and coated in seeds or flavoring (though the plain is hard to...

Voted Best of Las Vegas by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, this doughy delight has just the right amount of bite and just the right amount of chewy texture. They’re fresh out of the oven, so get ’em while they’re hot. Sit down in the cozy café or get one to go.

Finding things almost certainly made best in New York like pizza and bagels outside of the Big Apple is always a challenge. In Texas, fahgettaboudit. But, Wholy Bagel comes awfully close with its classic New York-style bagels, thanks to its New Jersey-born owner. They make their own cream cheese. That should tell you all you need to know.

This little storefront in the East Side Mini-Mart plaza cranks out the best bagel in the state, and it's obviously no secret. The entryway is usually packed with famished college kids (it's a mob scene by noontime on weekends) craving the dozen or so varieties. The Bagel Gourmet empire expanded with two satellite shops on Richmond and Thayer str...