After receiving a tip from a reader that an Upper West Side Pick-A-Bagel location had been converted into a Kossar’s Bagels & Bialys last week, ILTUWS went to check it out.
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ILTUWS took a trip to the new Kossar’s, whose story began in 1936 on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, when it was originally known as Mirsky and Kossar’s Bakery until 1953. In 2022, Kossar’s expanded into Hudson Yards and the Upper East Side, later opening a long-anticipated storefront on 72nd and West End Avenue in 2024.
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After ordering a garlic bialy at the counter ($1.75), we asked a Kossar’s staffer about the takeover. They told us the ownership of the location had changed, and with it, the brand. “Nothing else has changed,” added the employee. That includes the staff, which has remained intact, the menu, and, perhaps most amazingly, even how the bagels are made. Based on that, you could say you’re still eating Pick-A-Bagel bagels at this Kossar’s, which now appears on the Kossar’s website but not on the locations page or their Instagram, as of this writing. The change occurred last Friday, March 14, they told us.
While the Kossar’s staffer told us that, aside from the rebranding, everything else remained the same, a closer look at the menu reveals it now aligns more with traditional Kossar’s offerings. Notable items include the Kossar’s Classic sandwich ($18.25), featuring sliced nova, everything cream cheese, tomato, red onion, and capers, as well as a hot pastrami Reuben ($19.75), made with pastrami, melted Swiss cheese, spicy pickles, mustard, and served on seeded rye bread. The menu also features a variety of classic baked goods Kossar’s is known for, including babka, rugelach, and black-and-white cookies—items that Pick-A-Bagel doesn’t carry. Perhaps a little new brand training is in order.
We confirmed with Kossar’s on West 72nd that the West End Avenue location is part of the Kossar’s family. Comparing menus at both UWS locations, we found similar prices: both offer a $13 pastrami wrap, with the egg and cheese on the all-day breakfast menu priced at $8.50 on West End and $8.00 on 72nd Street. Bialys are $1.75 at both locations.
Kossar’s hours are 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily.
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As someone who’s been going to Pick-A-Bagel for years, I can confirm that the staff is the same. My first inkling that something was changing was on Saturday 3/15 when I went to buy bagels and, to my surprise and delight, saw bialys too. Also, the counter space was being renovated (which now displays Kossar’s baked goods) and there was a new faster check-out register. The following Friday I noticed the new outdoor signage. It’s odd that this was done with no prior announcement; I’m guessing it happened really fast and likely there was no time for one!
Glad the staff hasn’t changed, but if the bagels also haven’t changed at this location, is Kossar’s saying that their bagels on 72nd St are Pick-a-bagel bagels too!
I used to make pilgrimages to the original Kossar’s down on Grand Street. Then all it’s offerings were kosher, which is, alas, no longer the case. The bagels were ok, but not worth the trip. The draw was the ambrosial bialies, hot from the oven. Even better were the onion disks! Mimi Sheraton, once the food critic at the I Love the Upper West Side’s rival New York Times, singled out Kossar’s onion disks — six inches in diameter slices of heaven — as one of the city’s great foods. I’m all in for MKKA (Make Kossar’s Kosher Again)!
There is absolutely no reason to make Bagels Kosher. In this day and age of Restaurants’s expenses and overhead, it would be ridiculous for Kossars to pay for Kosher Certification on their bagels and raise prices to defer their costs. There are all kinds of people in this world, and most New Yorkers prefer to eat free from the restrictions of Kosher rules. They want access to bagels on Saturday and Sunday, and want Salmon and cream cheese on their bagels or if they or their guests’ prefer bacon, egg and cheese on a bialy, it’s offered.. You do you, and let them do them. Their bagels are delicious, their service is great, the quality of their food is fresh and well prepared. They are doing fine, they are serving Kossar’s Bagels at all of their locations, obviously. Mazel Tov to Kossar’s. As Jackie Mason would say, you are not an owner.
I also had been getting PickaBagles bagels from the place on West End Ave. (between 61st and 62nd St.) for many years. I would walk down from my home on West End and 69th St. So the new one at West End and 72nd is much closer to me. But a new development is that people who live in the building that houses the new Kossar’s complained about the smell (aroma?) from the baking bagels. So, at the present, ALL of the bagels are being baked at the West End Ave. (between 61st and 62nd St.) bakery and many are then transported to 72nd St. I am used to bagels that have just come out of the oven and are still warm. But the new ones from 72nd St. are cold, so you really don’t know when they were actually baked. I seriously doubt that these bagels are hand rolled as they claim; I believe that they re machine-made. I had my first of the hand-rolled bagels in the Bronx when I was 5 years old (I am now 90). These hand-rolled bagels were “hard as rocks” and much too much for my baby teeth. But the hardness vs. puffiness depends mostly on how much yeast is used and how long the bagels are allowed to rise before the the yeast fermentation is stopped by boiling them prior to baking. another taste variable is how much barley malt is mixed into the dough. I personally prefer more malt than Kossar seems to be using.
One more thing: I have always loved the “onion disks” which are called “Tsibelah Pletzels” in Yiddish (= “Onion Pretzels”) but these were never made at the lower West End Ave. store and I have not recently seen them at the 72nd St. place. I hope that the 72nd St. place may be able to somehow control the aroma of baking bagels and go back to making them again, although to me the aroma is like perfume that brings back childhood memories of Sunday breakfasts.
Jerry V, I’m seven years younger than you but, even so, born long ago enough to remember the Golden Age of Bagels in the Bronx. There was a dedicated bagel bakery on Nelson Avenue right off Macombs Road. By “dedicated” I mean all they did was bake bagels. Just bagels. Variety you wanted? OK, you could get them plain or with salt. That was it! The bakery was an easy walk from my house, so after shabbes my parents would send me there to buy a dozen. They came fresh out of the oven, still hot. So in winter months 10-year-old me would stuff the bag of bagels under my coat to keep me warm. By the next day the bagels would be rock hard because they didn’t use the preservatives that make bagels today taste feh. Day-old bagels were never an issue in my house, because they’d all be gone by the time we tuned in the Magnavox (or was it a Philco?) to watch “Your Show of Shows.”
Hello Fellow Former Bronxite,
So, you had 2 choices: bagels with salt vs. those without salt. We were not so advanced. We also had 2 choices: Bagels without salt vs. no bagels. To a large degree, the hardness of the bagels in those days relates to the heaviness of the dough. The bagel benders, as they were called, would roll the dough between their hands like clay to make a thick strand roughly about a foot long (just a guess) and then twist it into a circle. But at some point, a bagel-making machine was invented in Montreal to do this bending. But the machines could not handle the thick dough that had been bent by hand. So, the machines had to be fed a less dense dough that yielded a fluffier bagel after it was baked. Most people preferred these softer non-teeth breaking bagels. In those days, most of the bagelmakers were Jewish. Nowadays, most of them seem to be Latino. Of course, you know how to keep people from stealing your bagels? (Put Locks on them!)
Fascinating history about how mechanization makes things worse. I’m going to steal your joke about stealing bagels. Put locks on them. Ha! It made me laugh from my belly.