I’m not really that much of a bagel person. I guess because most bagels you get around the GTA are just bread in a bagel formation. Tim Horton’s or The Bagel Stop for example, or any brand of bagels you buy in plastic bags at the grocery store. And don’t even get me started on Great Canadian Bagel.

My best bagel experience thus far in life was on a co-op term back in university. One of the partners used to bring in two huge bags of bagels every friday from What A Bagel, along with whipped cream cheese. Seriously YUM. My fellow co-op Lillian and I used to scarf them down. Crisp on the outside, chewy on the inside, they were perfect.

Montrealers take their bagels very seriously. According to my co-worker who used to live there, there are two main joints you can go to: Fairmount Bagel, or St-Viateur. St-Viateur was where The Surreal Gourmet went on Glutten for Punishment (more Food Network Canada), where he tried to roll 44 bagels in 5 minutes. But Fairmount Bagel was en route to Cocoa Locale, so it was there I went.

The kitchen is open, and you can see all the action, which is neat for a food nerd like me. Check out the huge slab of bagel dough below:

Once the bagels are rolled, you can see the the kettle in the background where the bagels are boiled before going into the oven. I think I’ve read somewhere before that it’s the boiling step that’s responsible for the chewy delicious inside.  Then of course they go into the oven to get the crisp outside.

 I ordered a toasted sesame seed bagel with cream cheese and it was heavenly. If bagels like these were close to me I would eat them all.the.time.