Claire Ortiz and Luke Szyszkiewicz, Staff Writers

When we began our bagel reviews last semester, our initial idea was to review bagel places in the Greater Philadelphia Area. Over the break, when we took a trip to New York City, we couldn’t resist trying bagels from the known bagel capital of the world. Getting to the city at 6:30 AM, we had ample opportunity to seek out and find the best bagel near Penn Station. Our research took us to Liberty Bagels, where the rainbow bagel craze supposedly began so many years ago. One of their sandwiches was voted one of the best bagels in the city. We thought that was a good enough reason to make it our pick. 

Located on West 35^th St, only a five-minute walk from the train station, the place was very small, but PACKED with bagels. Claire ordered a sausage egg and cheese on a poppy seed bagel, as is tradition. I ordered a bacon egg and cheese on an everything. We did break our rule of trying one sandwich and one with cream cheese, but the opportunity for sandwiches was just too tempting. Opening our sandwiches, the first thing we noticed about the sandwiches was the size of them. These were some of the largest bagels we had ever seen. Our only issue was that there was not quite enough filling to sufficiently fill the large bagels. The taste was delicious. Claire went on record saying, “I would take a trip to New York just for these bagels.” Our only complaint was again, the slight lack of filling in the bagel. They were properly seeded, the taste was great, and it wasn’t even that expensive. 

Overall, this might be the best bagel we have had in our days reviewing bagels. We’d give it a 4.5/5 Gritty’s.