nyc: ess-a-bagel

probably one of the iconic eats in new york would be a bagel. ess-a-bagel is a popular bagel shop in nyc, it's close to my hotel so it was perfect. i woke up pretty early so i didn't rush to ess-a-bagel the line becomes very long mid morning.

i wanted to get a mini bagel only because of you know the calories =). but they didn' have any mini bagels. i was a bit irritated that they had to tell me there isn't  much price difference. hello it wasn't about the price it was the carbohydrates and calories that comes with it. anyway, i opted for the regular size, whole wheat of course. their bagels come in different flavors so be prepared to get confused but hurry up in deciding from what i've read when the store gets busy the guys preparing the bagels get pretty nasty so you better know what you want to order as you reach the counter.

i had mine sliced and toasted with vegetable cream cheese on the side. there are so many options of cream cheese available, what also piqued my interest was the sundried tomato cream cheese but with the reviews i've read, the vegetable cream cheese was highly recommended. i got it on the side because:

1. i want to control the amount of cream cheese i'll ingest...again trying to be health conscious here.

2. it was mentioned that the on the side option costs less.

so here's my bagel after i've slathered sufficient cream cheese not even half of what's inside the container. the bagel was very dense, i only finished half or even less than that. the vegetable cream cheese has peppers, carrots and celery? i forgot if it did have celery but predominantly red bell peppers. it was good but i reckon it was freshly made so the flavors haven't really seeped into the cream cheese yet. it was like 7am on a sunday morning i was probably one of the few who was awake in nyc hehe.  i had coffee too it was bleh.

i love bagels but i think this one is really too dense for me and maybe i should have ordered a different flavor and didn't try hard to be super health conscious haha. it was ok, nothing mind blowing so to speak so i guess that's also the reason why i didn't finish it, let's just say it wasn't worth the calories.

ess-a-bagel

831 3rd avenue near E 51st st.
http://www.ess-a-bagel.com/