8 Unwritten New York City Bagel Shop Rules Tourists Break Every Day

A visitor walks into Russ & Daughters on Houston Street and takes her place behind six people at the counter.

Four of them are holding little paper tickets.

She isn’t, so the next three customers through the door will order before she does.

These are the unwritten New York City bagel shop rules tourists break every day.

1. Asking Them to Scoop Your Bagel

Ask the guy at a New York City bagel counter to scoop your bagel, and you’re asking him to tear the middle out of bread he rolled by hand at four in the morning.

Scooping means digging the dough out of the inside, usually to cut carbs or to make room for more cream cheese.

A visitor from Los Angeles tried it in Manhattan and filmed what came back, which was a flat refusal and a word we can’t print.

His video pulled 8 million views in three days, and commenters piled on.

New Yorkers backed the shop.

Order the whole bagel, or order half of it, but don’t ask anybody to hollow out your breakfast.

2. Deciding at the Counter

A New York City bagel line moves at one speed, and it stops cold when somebody reaches the front still reading the board.

Washington Square News, New York University’s student paper, tells newcomers to stand aside until they know what they want.

Nobody can read your mind.

Andrew Silverstein, a lifelong New Yorker who runs Streetwise New York Tours, calls slowing everybody down the biggest social faux pas in New York society.

Pick your bagel, your spread, and your fish while you’re still six people back, then say all three in one breath.

Have your card out too.

3. Taking the Cream Cheese They Hand You

The default schmear at a New York City bagel shop is enormous, and almost nobody pushes back.

Max Falkowitz weighed samples from six shops for Serious Eats in 2014 and found anywhere from 0.7 ounces to 3.9 ounces of cream cheese on one bagel.

A representative of Ess-a-Bagel told Slate the staff there aim for about 3 ounces.

Marc Fintz of Davidovich Bakery in Queens puts the right portion at half an ounce with lox, maybe three-quarters without it.

That’s a wide gap.

Schmear is Yiddish for a spread, not a filling.

Slate’s Gilad Edelman went looking for New Yorkers who ask for less and found the opposite: They agree the portion is ridiculous, and they order it anyway because a special request costs three seconds nobody wants to spend.

Edelman spent years scraping the extra off with the wax paper his own bagel came wrapped in.

So say your amount out loud while you’re ordering.

4. Warming Your Bagel in the Bag

Many New York City bagel shops will warm your bagel in the bag if you ask, without a word of argument.

Then comes the steam.

Trapped in paper, that steam takes the crunch out of the crust you stood in line for.

Tompkins Square Bagels says as much in its own guide, which tells visitors that if they want it warm, they should eat it at the shop.

Newcomers ask for the warm-up because they’re carrying breakfast back to a hotel room.

That’s the trade they’re making.

By the time they unwrap it, they’re eating a very good roll.

5. Standing in a Line That Isn't There

At the old appetizing stores where New Yorkers buy their bagels and lox, your place in line comes from a numbered ticket.

A red ticket dispenser sits near the door at Russ & Daughters, and visitors walk past it every morning.

They form a polite row along the glass, then watch the staff call three people who came in five minutes behind them.

Take the ticket first.

The Russ family has sold fish on Houston Street since 1914, and the fourth generation runs the counter now.

Your turn moves fast once your number comes up, so spend the wait looking over the fish case.

6. Making Small Talk During the Rush

Say your order at a New York City bagel counter during the morning rush, then stop talking.

Praising the shop, asking the counter guy how his morning's going, mentioning that you flew in from Portland last night: All of it costs the people behind you a train.

Silverstein puts a warm greeting and a how-are-you on his list of things New Yorkers frown on at a bagel counter.

That reads cold everywhere else in America.

Speed is the courtesy.

Save the conversation for a Tuesday at two in the afternoon, when the guy behind the counter has time for you and will take it.

7. Ordering Coffee Like It's a Coffee Shop

Bagel shops in New York City sell coffee, and the coffee is coffee.

You can have it black, light and sweet, or swap in a tea.

Order an oat milk caramel macchiato at that same register, and you'll get a long pause, then a drink nobody pictured.

Washington Square News compares that request to walking into Joe's Pizza and asking for a gluten-free crust.

Ask for a regular instead.

In New York City, a regular means the coffee comes with milk and sugar already in it, and nobody asks you how you take it.

8. Waiting at the Register

Paying is only half of the exit at a New York City bagel shop.

Move down the counter the second your card clears, since the next person needs that spot at the register.

Then listen.

Whoever bags your order calls it out once, over the noise, and nobody goes hunting through the room for you.

Washington Square News tells newcomers to take their earbuds out, since missing the call means asking for a repeat while a dozen people wait.

Raise your hand when you hear it, take the paper bag, and go.

How Toasting Turned Into a Fight

New Yorkers don't toast a fresh bagel, everybody says, and the argument over that line ran a lot longer than it should have.

Murray's Bagels in Greenwich Village refused to toast anything for nearly two decades, then installed toaster ovens in June 2015 and announced on Twitter that a customer's satisfaction came first.

One headline called them traitors.

Four and a half years later, on National Bagel Day in January 2020, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted his order and called his bagel toasted.

The shop he named, Bagel Hole in Park Slope, doesn't own a toaster, so he deleted the tweet and reposted it without the word.

Bagelgate, they called it.

The practical version of the rule is simpler than the shouting: A bagel still warm from the oven doesn't need heat, and the batch that's been sitting in the basket since 6 a.m. does.

Where the Lox Comes From

Acme Smoked Fish supplies bagel shops and delis across the five boroughs from a plant in Greenpoint, and it calls itself the largest smoked fish company in the United States.

Harry Brownstein started the business in 1906 with a horse-drawn wagon, hauling other people's smoked fish to appetizing stores around Brooklyn.

He and his sons didn't smoke a fish of their own until 1954, on Gem Street.

That's about seventy years of smoke, not the century you'd guess.

Every Friday, Acme sells straight to the public out of that same building, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.

You order online first, and the window closes at 11:30 that morning.

Bring a cooler.