I felt like having a bagel and it's rare to find a good one. A bagel in Paris is not easy to find unless you visit the famous Bagelstein.
I stopped first at Bagel Corner: The idea is interesting. It's a bagel shop with six choices of bagels and three choices of meals. The original, the deli and the supreme. Five choices of main fillings and lots of veggies.
A clean shop, a small diner prepares bagels a la minute. The main problem is that those round shaped bagels are not boiled, they taste like a toasted baguette. They're fresh and beautifully filled but I'd call them sandwiches, not bagels. The ingredients are stingy, counted like as if the waiter has to account for how many salmon slices are used or how much cream cheese is spread.
The bun is toasted, the ingredients are filled, it's wrapped with a paper and cut in half. Three prices or three choices depending on the amount of things you pick; not the wisest of ideas, because ingredients sometimes don't match. I expected a pageant bagel filled with pastrami and without tomato. The salmon only needed cream cheese, without any veggies.
Nice looking photos but nothing fancy to make me want to come back. Not a bagel I recommend.
Bagelstein: Been here and done that and now am back to enjoy one of Paris' famous bagels again. A bagel is taken of shelf, lightly heated on the conveyor belt and filled with a generous load of fresh and tasty ingredients of a high quality. Meat and vegetables, smoked chicken and the sauces, each one different from the other, leaving a pleasant and interesting after note in the mouth.
The place is so funny. Look at the little details, the portraits on the wall, the press mentions and the funny corners guaranteed to make you smile.
The heavy, fried donuts are delicious as are many others. While music plays in the background we sat calmly for lunch.
The bagel is not chewy, it's not toasted to cover its chewiness but light and airy ready to be filled. The salted caramel is to die for, simply to die for. Delicious, mouthwatering bagels I surely recommend.
A bagel in Paris; Bagelstein it is!
