It depends where you live. I've had great bagels all over NYC and upper NJ, obviously, but also in Boston, Charlottesville, VA, Sarasota, FL and so on. Bagels

It depends where you live. I've had great bagels all over NYC and upper NJ, obviously, but also in Boston, Charlottesville, VA, Sarasota, FL and so on. Bagels made according to the "traditional way" don't have any eggs or fats in them. They're chewier and denser (and more flavorful IMO), but they also get hard/stale very quickly. Thus, I've found the most important aspect of a good bagel shop is very high turnover in the product and baking new batches throughout the day. Typically this means a place that bakes everything from scratch in house and only serves bagels. A bakery that offers bagels as one of its many products will probably add egg or oil to keep the bagels palatable longer, which is fine, but means the texture will be different, more like a roll.