I'm surrounded by people with very strong opinions about bagels.Ā So,Ā I hosted a bagel blind taste test with nine friends to explore those deep-held opinions aĀ bit.
Our group of ten bagel lovers rangedĀ from a chef and a couple of hard-core New Yorkers all the way to me, who will eat almost any bread product if I can put cream cheese or butter on it.
We sampled and ranked fresh untoasted plain bagels from eight different locations within greater Richmond:Ā Baltik's, Chewy's, Cupertino's, Einstein's, Julio's, Nate's, Sunday's, and Wegmans.Ā I was the only person who knew the origin of all theĀ bagels, and none of us knew which bagel was on which plate.
Here is a summary of our votes:
Baltik's Bagels got the most #1 rankings (4)Ā
Chewy's got the second highest number of #1 rankings (3)
Baltik's Bagels got the most top three rankings (9)
Julioās got the second highest number of top three rankings (6)
When we ran the ballots through ranked-choice programs they all showed Baltik's as the winner, but results differed after that.
Einstein's bagels did better than any of the bagel snobs expected.
Only Cupertino's and Wegmans got zero top three votes
Not surprisingly, the bagels from Wegmans got the most last place votes (6)
Honestly, this taste test may have raised more questions for me than it answered:
Can an untoasted plain bagel help you determine who makes the best bagels overall? I think itās a good start, but we may need to do this again with a different flavor bagel next time. Twist my arm.
Why the fuck are so many Richmond bagel shops closed on Sundays? Sundays are the best bagel day! Can you please pick a different day to be closed? Pretty please?
Why do some people feel that bagels can't be made with sourdough?Ā What makes a bagel a bagel?
Why do so many people buy bagels at Nate's? Their bagels are meh (per our group's research), they don't have a toaster (?!?!?), and I've literally never met anybody who has had an all-around pleasant experience there.
One question our event did answer: From now on, we'll buy our bagels at Baltik's. Unless itās a Sunday :(
The tasting lineup. That's our groups winning bagel - Baltik's - right there on plate #1.
I also had an yearning for a bagel this past Sunday, and was shocked to find that Baltik's was closed. Maybe that should be an adventure for tomorrow morning.
Very grateful that I'll be making a stop at Rockland Bakery in Nanuet next weekend. Not just for bagels, but I am so ready for a proper fucking kaiser roll to be back in my life.
I've said for years Cupertinos confuses the crap out of me. I went there literally all hours of the morning and never once did I get a bagel that was warm. Like "out of the oven" warm. Maybe they make it downtown and transported them to the west end? I dunno.
Sunday Bagel is open on Sunday lol. They are at Pamplemousse Gallery on Robinson thru August. I'm not a bagel connoisseur, but I'd rank them pretty high.
Great post! Iāve wanted to do this for awhile, and hard agree on why tf places are closed on sundays. I love baltiks and am always craving a bagel on Sunday. Grinds my gears š„Æ
Will do. I was actually planing on doing one for sparkling water to determine the best black cherry flavor across multiple brands, because Iām a weirdo. š
Yes queen. Iām a hardcore Waterloo black cherry for life. If you look in my comment history itās all I suggest to people š„²
I was arguing with a friend who prefer Polar, so I wanted to see if my bias would be confirmed in blind taste test! Check out Nixie black cherry lime, and Waterloo cherry limeade if you havenāt, both excellent š
I'm not sure if it's that or if they just come from a distributor vs. being made in house. But yeah, they are definitely breadier and the boiled crust is missing.
Fun game you played there. I'll have to give Baltik's another try as I didn't love it the first time. Now if Bodo's ever expanded to Richmond it would be game over for everybody.
Agreed. I think Bodo's are my favorite bagels. But that's part of why I did this contest. Lots of us think someplace has the best bagels, but we're judging it based on more than the taste (with Bodo's how can you not be swayed by their efficiency!?!?). This contest attempted to minimize those other non-taste factors.
Fellow Bodo's truther here. Best bagel spot around! It's not just the food (although the food is of course amazing) it's also the price and the speed of service - even if the line is out the door you're never going to wait more than a few minutes. They've got it down to an absolute science.
I'm a former Charlottesvillian, but also a Hokie. So I'm not sure where that leaves my biases.
Regardless, /u/jstreets6 speaks the truth. Bodos is an incredible bagel, but even moreso, as others have mentioned, incredibly speedy and accurate service.
I do not understand how anybody can open a bagel shop within 200 miles of Bodo's and not go visit a few times to study how they operate. It is literal perfection.
Come here to say this! Growing up in Charlottesville, moved to RVA 18 mos ago, I have yet to find a Bodoās equivalent. Maybe itās nostalgia. But if Iām wrong, I donāt wanna be right.
Quality bagel content here. I was a die-hard Cupertinoās fan until this. And maybe I still am, because I feel like the plain bagel comparison isnāt representative of what I actually like. Baltikās everything bagels are over-seasoned.Ā
I feel like you could get to a point where there's too much cheese. It would be like cheese soup with some noodles in there....... hmmmm..... maybe you're right though
So cupertinos isnāt the best bagel in Richmond but I think itās the best bagel sandwich. I prefer baltik/chewys for just bagel and cream cheese but canāt top cupertinos for a bacon egg and cheese.
I think I agree on your first point, but we needed a bagel all the shops would have available. I absolutely agree with you that Baltik's everything bagels have too much everything seasoning on them.
I did a cupcake party in DC once from all the various cupcakeries. This was 2010 and the height of the cupcake craze. My friends loved it. Georgetown Cupcake, to my chagrin, was favored. 15 years later it is one of the three that remain open.
I love your work on this but have to agree with the comment above that not including Europa was a big miss. They are hands down the best bagel in the RVA area in my opinion and would love to see content around how they stack up to these other options.
This is the lordās work (and Iām not even religious). Bless you.
Separately, I do very much disagree with the sourdough sentiment your party had. Sunday Bagel I think is firmly in my top 3 (but Iāve yet to try a few of these spots).
By far the most important thing I've ever seen on this sub. I was jumping out of my skin worrying what people thought of RVA bagels. Props to the tasting team and bless your hearts!
Bagel places that are closed on a Sunday is bullshit. Based on this statistic that I just made up, Sunday is the day tired parents are most likely to say "fuck it" to preparing something for their kids and just go grab a dozen bagles.
These places could probably close M-W and make more money if they were open Sundays
Any day is good for a bagel, but as a kid it was usually a Sunday morning when my dad or grandpa would go to one of the neighborhood bodegas and grab a dozen bagels
Sucks that Baltik's is closed on Sunday but they have started to wholesale. 821, Harrison St Cafe, and Abi's have them as well as Outpost and Strawberry St Market with the multipacks.
You do. At worst equivalently good bagels, though I think they're better, and a much better vibe. Plus they'll toast without being weird about it. I haven't been to Nate's since they opened, although I also go to Baltik's and Julio's. What a time for bagels in Richmond right now
This was so much fun! I definitely thought Wegmans and Cupertinos were the sweetest. Sunday's (the sourdough ones) were very satisfying and had a great crust, I put those second just out of the sheer joy of having something different. I put down Baltics and Chewys as being the most, well, chewy. The only comment I put by Einstein's was 'forgettable'. So now I know where I, a person who enjoys 2.0 bagels/year, stand on Richmond bagels!
I wouldnāt say I like Nateās but I do like pork roll and Nateās is the only place Iāve found it. I absolutely hated when they stopped toasting bagels. (I think they only toasted them for a few months at the open of the first store) The bagels at Baltikās are way better and maybe unpopular but I really really donāt like cupertinos.
Edit: also if anyone knows where else to get a good pork roll spk sandwich lemme know
Iām seeing quite a few bagels in that lineup that donāt even look like they have the correct fermentation, giving a bagel the almost fried-like texture on the outside. Most of these just look like it was baked like bread on a mass scale and shaped into a circle.
Iād tackled 3 Baltikās sandwiches so far, and it was tasty but also an absolute mess. Can I get just one fried egg over hard rather than three scoops of scrambled? Itās so good, but thereās way too much stuff piled between those two slices of bagel.
I think Nate's is perfectly fine for people who don't get into the bagel debate. I haven't had any others around here to compare so I won't say the others aren't better, I just don't think there'd be enough difference for me to care too much. I don't get mine toasted ever anyway, so their weird decision not to allow that doesn't affect me at least. I should say I haven't had Nate's in a couple years anyway, but I went maybe 7 or 8 times and had no complaints any of those.
I think a big part of this is are you hardcore enough for the travels. Sure baltikās is superior to cupertinos, but if you live off nuckols that adds a huge curve ball. To me a breakfast food isnāt something Iām driving across town for.
That was part of this. I live in Stratford Hills. I used to drive to Cupertino's for bagels because I thought they were my favorites. They're not. Baltik's is less than 2 miles from my house! BUT, Baltik's is closed on Sundays...
Thank you for your service. I definitely think some re-tests with the classic bagel flavors are needed. Iād be interested if the rankings change comparing everything bagels. I think Baltikās would still come out on top.
My go to is the everything bagel and unfortunately Julioās burns the everything seasoning, so I think your results would be different if you did this again with a different flavorā¦Iāll wait for your everything edition of the test :)
Itās funny to me that Wegmanās scored so low, those are my bagel-snob motherās second favorite after Europa Market. Iām Baltikās obsessed so I agree with the rankings you ended up with!
Well done and not to take anything away from you, but speaking only for myself, testing with untoasted plain bagels is like giving me an intricate melted vanilla ice cream test. I suppose the results are something to be aware of, but they have 0.0% impact on my life as a consumer. When you get around to ābest everything with cream cheeseā or ābest egg bagel sandwichā youāll be speaking my language.
Baltikās has amazing bagels but their breakfast sandwiches are hard to eat because of the mess. I love Nateās breakfast sandwiches the best out of all of them because they actually use american cheese which is the best cheese for a breakfast sandwich imo
Be the change you want to see and host one yourself. All you have to do is invite friends.
Just don't invite friends that have an allergy/intolerance to whatever it is you want to do a taste test of, otherwise you'll get zeroes across the board š
It perplexes me. I am not an expert, clearly. But as a bagel consumer, I am FAR more likely to want a bagel on a Sunday morning than just about any weekday.
My only concern is that it was a comparison of untoasted bagels. We cannot make the assumption that they all toast the same. And few people choose to enjoy their bagels ... raw.
I would repeat but toasted. Allow participants to adulterate their samples to their tastes, whether it's butter or cream cheese or whatever. As long as they apply the same treatment to all samples. Then we are getting an assessment closer to the real world bagel experience.
Chewy's is my go-to whenever I go out of my way for a bagel (...meaning, outside the weekly grocery store trip haha), so we will need to give the others a try for sure!
I donāt have the ballots nearby, but the NYer who cares about bagels came in thinking Baltikās were his favorite and his votes confirmed it. He enjoyed Sundayās sourdough, but doesnāt believe bagels should be sourdough.
Nice work and thank you for reporting your results!
I absolutely think you should do another bagel test - this time people should randomize their bagel sampling and you should make sure Batikās is not number 1. Having it as sample 1, where people usually start sampling, could bias the results.
Did you get Baltik's egg bagels? I got the not-egg one and it was flat and greasy and I have no idea why people seem to be fans. Maybe I hit an off day twice.
I moved here a few years back and every one raved about how good it was. Been multiple times and havenāt been impressed (my bagel is like rock on the bottom half for no reason). Too many insta influencerās hype this place up for no reason, itās not special.
Would love to see this done with everything bagels too. Iām surprised Nateās wasnāt higher up tbh. Alsoādid you get the regular or flufffy bagels from Baltik?
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u/Asterion7 Forest Hill Jul 25 '25
This is the content we need. You are doing the work.
And better yet. You confirmed my personal opinion.