It's Bagels!, W1

New York bagels with a hint of nostalgia

I would never claim to go into any review free of bias — the fantasy of critical objectivity is just that, I’m afraid — but I’ll admit to particularly strong feelings ahead of trying It’s Bagels! I was, to be blunt, a sceptic.

It’s Bagels! first brought its New York-inflected bagels to Primrose Hill in 2023 to much fanfare, enough that it was able to open new branches in Notting Hill and Soho last year. All of this rubbed me the wrong way. Primrose Hill? Rapid expansion? Bringing New York bagels to London? Blergh.

So, regrettably, I have to admit that It’s Bagels! is pretty good. Perfect? No. The best bagels in London? Certainly not. But the best New York bagels in London? Quite possibly.

It was inevitable that a place like It’s would both appear and succeed eventually. Plenty of places have tried to bring North American bagels to the UK — I have fond, if bemused, memories of the chain The Great Canadian Bagel making an international expansion to Barnet, of all places, when I was eight — and New York Bakery Co.’s cylindrical bags of dry, stodgy hoops are a supermarket staple.

Despite that, there haven’t been many places doing them well. I’m a fan of The Bagel Guys, also known as Paulie’s Bagels at their second location (Why they have two names? I do not know) and I’ve heard good things about Dalston’s Papo’s Bagels too.

What Paulie’s, Papo’s, and It’s all have in common is nostalgia: each of the three was started by a New Yorker on a mission to recreate the taste of home. That’s probably also what makes this new wave of New York bagel shops better than what we’ve had before. These aren’t people just looking to make a quick buck selling bad bagels to clueless Londoners; they want to make the best New York bagels they can because that’s what they want to be able to eat.

And It’s does a pretty good job. I’ll be the first to admit I’m not a bagel connoisseur. On my last trip to New York my focus was firmly on pizza, and just about the only bagels I ate came from the excellent — and now sadly closed — Absolute Bagels on the Upper West Side. Fortunately Vivian has eaten an awful lot more New York bagels than I have, and It’s passed her test. These are thick and chewy, but lighter, softer, and squishier than the London style, a little closer to bread. They’re bigger too, though It’s rolls these in a tight knot with a small hole, which suits their destiny as a vehicle for sandwiches.

The rest of the trappings are New York too. Bagels are available in a range of coatings, including sesame, garlic, onion, and everything, with a sweeter cinnamon and raisin variant too. For fillings, you don’t get salmon, it’s lox. Instead of cream cheese, it’s a schmear. Even the tuna salad is billed as “tunafish,” a specific Americanism I’m not sure I’ve ever seen make it to the UK before. The only downside is it comes with New York pricing: £1.75 for an unfilled bagel, with sandwiches starting from £5. That’s a far cry from the 40p you pay at London’s Beigel Bake, though in fairness I think the Brick Lane spot is the outlier here.

To go with your bagels there’s a full range of schmears and salads sold by the tub, plus filled sandwiches, both hot and cold. Hot options include a bacon, egg, and cheese, though in what feels like a mild act of sacrilege the egg is fried, rather than the thin, folded omelette I’ve always associated with a BEC. Is that just a me thing?

The BEC isn’t bad, but I ordered it by delivery, which was arguably setting it up to fail. I’m not sure eating it fresh would have solved the problem that the saltiness of the bacon overpowered all else though — the ratios were just a little off though. Better was a lox and scallion schmear on everything: a simple sandwich, but one any New York bagel spot has to get right. First time round I found the everything seasoning a little too burnt and bitter, but subsequent bagels didn’t have that problem. The lox and schmear delivered exactly what I needed from them though, and importantly were both generously loaded.

The heavy New York aesthetic may come off a bit try-hard in London, but it’s clear that you’ll have the best time with It’s if you lean in to your inner Travis Bickle. What you should not do, under any circumstances, is fall for the trap of the Soho branch’s “Secret Salt Beef”. As best as I can tell, the salt beef bagel is not a New York staple — not even by the names corned beef or pastrami. This is a London bagel, popularised by Beigel Bake, where a dense puck of dough is stuffed with a fistful of freshly sliced salt beef, a few thick cut slices of pickle, and enough English mustard to bring tears to your eyes. It is a perfect sandwich: ugly, impractical, deranged, and delicious.

The It’s Bagels! take is absolutely dreadful. Dry, lukewarm, shredded beef is scooped out of a tub, then topped with pickles, onions, mayonnaise, the barest hint of mustard, and two cold slices of Swiss (read: the pale white version of American sliced cheese) that never stood a chance of even beginning to melt. It is the most miserable sandwich I can remember eating, rescued only by, well, the bagel. That bit’s still good.

It’s a strange reversal of fortunes. The UK has been plagued by bad New York bagels for decades. A few good takes on the style finally come along, and It’s gets in its own way by turning out a sad impression of London’s bagel style instead.

The good news is, that doesn’t matter at all. It’s Bagels! may feel insecure about Beigel Bake’s salt beef superiority, but you don’t have to be. Instead, ignore that and focus on what they’re actually good at: just about everything else, including the everything.