Well! You may regret getting me started on this.

Many people will tell you that the difference is the New York City water. I have serious doubts about this theory. For one thing, New York City and Long Island have completely different water sources, and yet Long Island bagels are every bit as good as New York City bagels. It doesn't add up. I've had bagels outside of New York from places that took pride in importing New York water, and they weren't good.

I think the big difference is that making real bagels is a long and onerous process, and places outside of New York think they can take shortcuts. I'll give you the best example I've ever seen. Years ago, when Providence Bagel first opened, maybe even before it opened, I read an article about them in a local magazine. The owner talked about how they were going to bring real New York-style bagels to Rhode Island for the first time. He described how he'd hired a professional bagel consultant from New York to show him how to do it.

The consultant part was already suspicious, as I think anyone who wants to make New York bagels should first spend a significant amount of time apprenticing in a New York bagel shop -- so already you're seeing shortcuts here. But then he said that while New York bagels are traditionally first boiled and then baked, the consultant showed him how he could buy a special oven that would do the same thing in just one step. Even though I was alone, I remember saying, "No, no, no!" out loud. Sure enough, when I went and tried the bagels, I could immediately tell they weren't the real thing.

Here's a good video I saw recently about how they make bagels at Utopia Bagels, a well-respected shop that I've personally never been to. Notice that the process is long, difficult, and best performed by people who have been doing it for many years. Nobody wants to do this, but in New York you HAVE to do it because there's too much competition and you're going to fail if you don't. I suspect places outside of New York are omitting different steps -- but they're all omitting at least one of them. Providence Bagel, for example, isn't boiling them. Others may not refrigerate them first, or may not use malt. Everybody's doing at least something wrong.

One commonality I've noticed in almost all bagels outside New York is a consistent texture. Bagels should NEVER have a consistent texture. They should be slightly crispy on the outside and dense and doughy on the inside. A good bagel should hurt your jaw a little to eat (Rebelle is the only bagel I've ever had outside New York that did this). You shouldn't be able to just chomp right through it -- as you bite, you should feel your teeth sinking further and further into it. It's not a roll. There should be a distinct malty flavor, which I rarely if ever see outside New York. This actually isn't traditional, but I also like my bagels big, so big that the hole almost disappears, which most of the better New York places will do these days and places outside of New York rarely do.