Montreal bagels, you have finally arrived and today I bought a dozen of you. I was walking through Kensington market on this cold Saturday, (which is becoming very gentrified), but I smelled a wood burning oven and followed the smell to Nu Bagel.
I grew up eating only St. Urbain bagels (as my father is from Montreal and no others were allowed in our home) so it was like walking into my childhood. The smell of the fresh bagels coming out of the wood burning oven was heaven. They have freshly made whipped cream cheese and smoked salmon (along with many bagel/sandwich options and combinations) to stay or to go, which means that I will be regularly coming for a bagel to sit and eat fresh out of the oven, and then take a half dozen to go.
Though I don't normally pay $6 for cream cheese, I get that it is freshly made and not from a supermarket but it is supplied by Mendel's in the market. Half a dozen bagels is $5.
I am so overwhelmingly happy that this place has opened, though if I keep eating the way I did today I will have to start exercising two to four times a day and wear elastic waist pants.
UPDATE: I went back to sit down a bagel with lox, cream cheese, capers and red onion. The concept of this place is taking the old and building something new. So they aren't advertising as a Montreal bagel place because they are something newer and mixing different tastes and recipes. It was the evening the great Toronto snowstorm was starting and it was warm and welcoming inside. I had a chance to chat with the owners and they couldn't have been more kind and friendly.