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| - Incroyable! I had a sesame bagel here, fresh from the oven, and it was like a mix of a New York bagel and, I want to say... a croissant? As a standalone savory pastry, this thing worked. It was good with a schmear* but also equally good on its own, and on a par with the finest of NY bagels, but different: much smaller (50-75% the size), with a crust as crispy but with less pull, and more fluffy inside than chewy.
St-Viateur has a big fridge with spreads and juice, but they don't do sandwiches. They sell bagels plain and whole and the rest is up to you. They have stacks and stacks of flour, a big oven, and large bagel bins with your options--sesame, poppy, a few others. No onion, alas, which would've qualified for a minus point if not for how good the bagels I had were.
As for famed bagel rivalries... I enjoyed the bagels here more than the ones I got at Fairmount, the other famous Montreal bageleers. In fairness to Fairmount, though, the 1st bagel I had from them was not perfectly oven-fresh, whereas the 1st I had at St-Viateur was. And I noticed the St-Viateur bagels I'd bought tasted significantly more plain later in the day, after time had a chance to de-awesome-ify them. My suspicion, then, is that the two places are about equivalent.
* Try their salty salmon paste, it's like spreadable lox. Unfortunately it only comes in a container that you'd be hard-pressed to finish in one sitting, unless there's a group of you.
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