New York Bagel of the Month Club: Delicious, but Spendy

I recently had the chance to work with Einstein Bros. Bagels on a small campaign and posted some photos of their delicious bagels, cooked locally just a few miles from me and oven to table in under an hour (if I time it right!). With appropriate chutzpah I had the New York Bagel of the Month Club reach out and say “our bagels are better. Want to find out for yourself?” to which I said that of course my bagel-loving family would love to compare our local Colorado bagels to genuine made-on-Long-Island New York bagels! Then the fun part: choosing which bagels to include. Suffice to say, a NY Bagelry has quite a few options including some that were a bit weird, like their tie-dye rainbow bagels. I’m sure they taste fine, but it could also be an opportunity to experiment with the subtle relationship between color and taste too!

My baker’s dozen included a mix of sesame bagels, everything bagels, plain bagels and a few traditional bialys thrown in too. If you’re not from New York, you’re probably wondering “uh, what’s a bialy”? Here’s the answer: “Round with a depressed middle filled with cooked onions and sometimes poppy seeds, it is simply baked (bagels are boiled, then baked). This means its outside is matte, not shiny, and it doesn’t have that pull-away crust.”

Sure enough, a box of bagels arrived via FedEx just a few days later and opening it up was heavenly. Ohhh that smell… Here’s that “unboxing” experience for ya:

Okay, nice, but what about the taste of these bagels? Well, once I stopped just enjoying the lovely aroma I pulled out a favorite: An everything bagel.

Sliced (they arrive unsliced, but you really want to slice them before you freeze any. I have this fancy bagel slicer to make the job super easy!). Toasted. With butter. Tell me you don’t want to reach into the screen and grab this one to enjoy:

In fact, I couldn’t resist having that first bite even to take a photograph. Oh man, so good.

Then in an “East Coast Meets West Coast” combination, I pulled out a sesame bagel…

… toasted it and slathered it with jalapeño cream cheese. Yes, jalapeño cream cheese. It’s a thing, and made right, it’s fantastic:

This was after the bagels were in the fridge for a few days, actually. Even with my kids stuck at home with me, we can’t go through 13 bagels in a day! Well, we might be able to come close, but why not take our time and enjoy them?

There’s no question, the New York Bagel of the Month Club bagels are really delicious and, yes, better than the local Einstein Bros Bagels.

But there’s this little matter of economics that has to be factored in too. Einstein Bros Bagels charges $15.79 locally for a baker’s dozen with two tubs of cream cheese. Ignoring the cream cheese cost, that factors out to $1.21 per bagel. Not bad at all, but when you consider that they charge $4.29 per tub to purchase separately, that ostensibly means that the bagels in that baker’s dozen are a crazy affordable $0.55/bagel.

Obviously, New York Bagel of the Month Club is a luxury item and there’s a little factor of FedEx shipping involved, but it prices out at $41.99-$44.95/month depending on your subscription duration. No cream cheese (it wouldn’t survive the trip), no extras, just 13 delicious bagels. Which works out to $3.45/bagel. Then again, if I walked into an Einstein Bros Bagel shop and asked for them to slice a bagel, toast it and serve it to me with butter, that jumps up to $2.58.

Enough math. Now you know that getting your dozen bagels flown in from Long Island, New York is a premium experience, but if you love, I mean really love good bagels and are stuck in an area of the country where you don’t have good local options, a one month, three month, even one year subscription to the New York Bagel of the Month Club might be a really fun – and sanity-saving – gift for a loved one or even yourself.

Even better, you can use code “DT10” and receive an instant 10% off your order, so that $3.45 bagel just dropped down to $3.10. In case that $0.35 is really important. 🙂

Me? I’m heading back into the kitchen for yet another bagel. They are indeed darn hard to resist…

Disclosure: New York Bagel of the Month Club sent us a dozen bagels in return for this write up. Which is ridiculously nice of them. Thanks!