Warning: Despite using the same name, this is not the H&H Bagels you used to know and love, or have heard that other people used to know and love! We learned that the hard way.
After eating some incredibly bland bagels, we figured something must be wrong and we did our due diligence. We found that the place is not run by the original owners, and it is clearly NOT the same place as the famous H&H Bagels (both locations of which are now sadly closed), because these bagels were truly unacceptable.
H&H was the last of the major bagel places we’d been wanting to try and for some reason it took us years to finally make our way there given that the more convenient location closed and in order to try it you have to go to their UES location, 81st and 2nd avenue. Not very convenient for most of NYC. But with the opening up of the 2nd avenue line, we thought it was time (that and we conveniently combined it with a trip to Two Little Red Hens!).
We went for weekend lunch, knowing the lines would be super long, and we were right. After waiting for about 20-25 minutes, we had our bagels in hand, grabbed a table, and tried them.
One poppy bagel with scallion cream cheese, fresh tomato, and fresh red onion. One sesame bagel with veggie cream cheese, fresh tomato, and fresh red onion.
We basically felt like we were eating nothing. There was no taste. No taste in the bagel, no taste in the cream cheese. The only thing that had flavor was the red onion, which is not their doing. I get that a bagel is just bread, but bread is not flavorless and bagels certainly aren’t flavorless. They are actually delicious and have a very specific flavor that is accented by the poppy, sesame, or whatever you might have on it. Here, the bagels themselves had no taste and the varieties didn’t add anything. And the cream cheese, which usually has quite a strong flavor and adds a lot to the bagel, had minimal effect here. The scallion and the veggie tasted nearly identical and though they each had chunks of scallion and vegetables respectively, it tasted like the pieces were devoid of flavor, too.
And another thing is that they do put less cream cheese than they do at other places, though we didn’t particularly mind that given how bland it was. On the bright side, coffee is served with a generous amount of half and half, making it quite good.
Also, whatever your thoughts are about sanitation grades for restaurants, I do think it’s a bit telling and odd for a bagel shop to be rated a B. I mean how many health code violations can baking bread really get you?
I have rarely not finished a bagel, but I didn’t here. Extra points off for failing miserably at living up to the name.
