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Food fights · New York
New York's best bagel
Hand-rolled against hype, Queens against the Upper West Side. Sixteen bagels, one round a day.
Round 1 opens Monday, November 2The opening matchups. Voting opens Monday, November 2, one round a day, champion Friday, November 6.
Russ & Daughters: The appetizing shop that's been feeding New York smoked fish since 1914. Barney Greengrass: The Sturgeon King, on Amsterdam Avenue since 1908.
Kossar's Bagels & Bialys: Open since 1936, the last great bialy bakery in the city, with bagels to match. Leo's Bagels: Downtown's favorite, hand-rolled near Hanover Square.
Apollo Bagels: The bagel with the open, airy crumb that made one of the city's longest lines. Liberty Bagels: The Midtown shop known for its rainbow bagels and its stuffed ones.
Utopia Bagels: Hand-rolled and kettle-boiled in Whitestone, the bagel critics drive out to Queens for. Edith's: Elyssa Heller's Jewish-American sandwich shop, bagels included.
Murray's Bagels: A Chelsea institution that famously refused to toast. Bagel Hole: Small, dense, old-school bagels in Park Slope, never puffed up.
New Absolute Bagels: The Broadway shop that closed in 2024 and came back under new owners with many of the old crew, and a line again. Zucker's Bagels & Smoked Fish: Hand-rolled, kettle-boiled, and smoked fish by the pound.
Tompkins Square Bagels: Dozens of house cream cheeses and a bagel that holds up to all of them. PopUp Bagels: The rip-and-dip bagel that started as a Connecticut pop-up and took over New York.
Ess-a-Bagel: Big, chewy, piled high: the Midtown bagel people defend to the end. Bo's Bagels: Harlem's hand-rolled bagel shop, with the neighborhood behind it.
Tell me when it starts
Round 1 of New York's best bagel opens Monday, November 2. We'll email you that morning with the matchups.
This also opens a free Chef Amazing account: keep the places you love, the lists friends send you and your next trip. Your address is never shared or sold. Votes count without an account.The bracket
Round of 16 Mon, Nov 2
- 1Russ & Daughters vs 16Barney Greengrass
- 8Kossar's Bagels & Bialys vs 9Leo's Bagels
- 5Apollo Bagels vs 12Liberty Bagels
- 4Utopia Bagels vs 13Edith's
- 6Murray's Bagels vs 11Bagel Hole
- 3New Absolute Bagels vs 14Zucker's Bagels & Smoked Fish
- 7Tompkins Square Bagels vs 10PopUp Bagels
- 2Ess-a-Bagel vs 15Bo's Bagels
Still to come: Quarterfinals (Tue, Nov 3), Semifinals (Wed, Nov 4), The final (Thu, Nov 5).
The 16
How it works
Sixteen places, picked by Chef from our lists, the critics and the lines out the door, seeded by Chef's read. One round a day on the New York clock: the Round of 16, the quarterfinals, the semifinals, then the final, and the champion the morning after. Anyone can vote, no account needed, one vote per matchup, and you can change it until midnight. Most votes goes through; a tie goes to the better seed.
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Photos marked "a photo like it" are not of that place: Jeremy Keith, CC BY 2.0; Daderot, CC0; Brian Boucheron, CC BY 2.0; Carl Lender, CC BY 2.0; T.Tseng, CC BY 2.0; FranHogan, CC BY-SA 4.0; LinguisticsGirl.Librarian, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. Votes are counted once per browser per matchup; places don't pay to be here.
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