Happiness is a fresh hot bagel

One would assume that living in New York City fresh hot bagels would be easy to find anywhere. You know what they say about assuming. I live on the upper East side and it is incredibly hard to find a good bagel in my neighborhood. First I checked bagel express which is two blocks from my apartment. When I got there I was surprised to see a C rating on the window. I might be able to compromise with a B rating but definitely not a C rating. Did I mention that it was a rain storm and I had my 14 month old son in the stroller. Yes this is how determined I was to find a good bagel. There is another nondescript bagel place near me but I wouldn't even consider it because I've had their bagels before and they're always stale. At this point, I finally remembered Tal bagels on 86 street between first and second Avenue. I could tell from the outside that they mean business what bagel place opens at 5:30 in the morning? Trying to be health-conscious I ordered the whole-wheat everything bagel with light vegetable cream cheese. This bagel tasted good but not as good as the next bagel. Yes you heard me right the next bagel. The table that I was sitting at was facing directly into the kitchen where they were making the bagels. Although I had already finished three quarters of my bagel and I wasn't even hungry I couldn't stop drooling over the hot bagels that were on the way out of the kitchen. After watching the guy bringing hot bagels in a basket back-and-forth I finally had to stop him and ask him for one that came right out of the oven. The first bite of this bagel that was still steaming was heavenly it didn't even need cream cheese. I just realized that I've never had a hot steaming bagel even though I grew up in New York City and lived here almost my entire life. From now on I'm going to ask for the hot steaming bagel right out of the oven and not even worry about cream cheese. On second thought, maybe at least the side of lox. http://www.talbagelsny.com/