The great divide – a New York born bagel maker explains what separates bagels from beigels

Queuing for beigels is nothing new. Londoners have been waiting (im)patiently for an early-hours carb fix on Brick Lane or Golders Green High Road for decades.

But the lines of people snaking round the block at Primrose Hill’s It’s Bagels have taken our city’s dedication to floury foods to the next level. And it’s the New York style bakeries that have triggered this fresh appetite for the Jewish roll with a hole. A small tsunami of bakeries are riding the wave of London’s latest bready trend.

What’s all the excitement about? I asked Dan Martensen of It’s Bagels — one of the OG’s of the UK capital’s newer bagel bakeries — to describe the New York bagel.

He told me that Big Apple bagels are bigger and texturally different to their UK cousins, which he describes as smaller, doughier, sweeter with a softer chew than their crustier cousins.

“New York bagels are fluffy and chewy on the inside and crusty on the outside. They’re also mostly covered in different toppings on the actual bagel which, when they go into the oven, gives them a different flavour.”

Unlike our limited London signature bakes the American arrivals tend to come in a huge variety of flavours. There’s poppy, sesame, garlic, salt or a combination them of the above an ‘everything’ bagel.

Martensen offers ten different varieties at his stores, but in the last 20-something years, he tells me, the choice back home has exploded with some bagel shops in New York touting 20 types.

And where us Brits tend to stick to savoury toppings like salmon or salt beef, egg or tuna and eat our beigels for lunch, high tea or late-night snack, Stateside, they’re predominantly eaten for breakfast.

“It’s not uncommon for a New Yorker to get up and take the dog out or go for a stroll at around six in the morning and be there when the bagel shop opens so they can get the fresh ones out of the oven.”

US toppings also differ from our limited offer — with their bagel shops offering an array of cream cheese-based schmears (savoury and sweet) which are slathered on in far more generous proportions than we’re used to. The topping is almost as thick as the bagel either side of it.

Martensen’s has just opened his third London bakery in just over a year the previous week, but he waxes lyrical on every question I ask him. If I hadn’t interjected with new questions, he could probably have talked non-stop for our entire 30-minute interview about his favourite breadstuff.

The project sparked off when the New York State-born and raised photographer (now based in west London) missed the Jewish bakes so much during Lockdown that he set about perfecting them himself. Post-pandemic, he and Caravan’s baker Jack Ponting, whose professional skills helped make Martensen’s bagel baking mission a reality, found (Martensens’s) bagel nirvana and the lockdown-born project went live.

The queues around the block at his first store in Primrose Hill were enough to indicate we were ready for the new style roll. And in just over a year, the OG has been joined by two more It’s Bagels stores — Notting Hill (on Westbourne Park Road) landed in August, and the Soho store opened on the corner of Berwick and D’Arblay Streets at the end of October.

Conscious that unlike laidback Primrose Hill’s vibe, the latest store — in the heart of W1 — will be patronised by shoppers and workers baying for their bagels, this branch will have a grab and go section. The more popular combinations like The Works (lox, onion, capers, lemon and (when in season) tomatoes) and not so kosher BEC (bacon, egg and cheese) will be ready to roll. Filling ratios are an awkward-to-eat-in-public US-style with the width of filling about a third of the total depth of the sandwich.

Does he eat a bagel every day? “No, but this morning [the day after the US Election] I drowned my sorrows at Notting Hill with an everything bagel topped with jalapeno schmear — my favourite.”

Instagram: It’s Bagels