A tower of bagels before they are baked in the kitchen at The Georgetown Bagelry.
(WTOP/Rachel Nania)
WTOP/Rachel Nania
WTOP's Program Director, Laurie Cantillo, contributed bagels from Zaro's, in New York, to the local taste test. The response? Some say the bagels are still better in New York; others say D.C. has some great options.
(WTOP/Laurie Cantillo)
WTOP/Laurie Cantillo
WTOP/Rachel Nania
WTOP staffers gather around to test bagels from some of the D.C. area's best bagel shops. In a blind taste test, Bethesda Bagels won the vote for best bagel, followed by Bagel City and The Georgetown Bagelry. Staffers tested plain bagels and everything bagels from all five stores.
(WTOP/Rachel Nania)
WTOP/Rachel Nania
WTOP staffers take their bagel testing very seriously. One staffer maps out her samples so she can take notes and recall her favorite bagel experience.
(WTOP/Rachel Nania)
WTOP/Rachel Nania
After visiting five of the area's best bagel shops, WTOP staffers decided to do a blind taste test and vote for their favorites. Bagels from Bullfrog Bagels, Georgetown Bagelry, Bagel City, Brooklyn Bagel Bakery and Bethesda Bagels were cut into bite-size pieces and placed into numbered bags. WTOP staffers then voted for their favorite.
(WTOP/Rachel Nania)
WTOP/Rachel Nania
The selection counter at Bethesda Bagels in Dupont Circle.
(WTOP/Rachel Nania)
WTOP/Rachel Nania
Bethesda Bagel isn't just crowded on the weekends -- lunch time draws a crowd too. The bakery serves pizza bagels, bagel dogs, sandwiches and breakfast all day. (It also sells huge doughnuts -- we mean huge.)
(WTOP/Rachel Nania)
WTOP/Rachel Nania
Bethesda Bagels makes a variety of bagel flavors and other "bagel spinoffs," including mini bagels, flat bagels (called flagels) and mini flagels.
(WTOP/Rachel Nania)
WTOP/Rachel Nania
Bethesda Bagels has two locations -- one in Dupont Circle and one at Bethesda Row.
(WTOP/Rachel Nania)
WTOP/Rachel Nania
Brooklyn Bagel Bakery uses a kettle boil for its bagels. The Wilson Boulevard storefront also serves sandwiches, soups, salads and New York-style pizzas.
(WTOP/Rachel Nania)
WTOP/Rachel Nania
You don't need to travel to New York to get a taste of Brooklyn bagels -- you just need to head to Arlington, Virginia. The New York-inspired bakery and deli opened in 2000, and the owners even considered shipping New York water to Virginia to achieve that "authentic taste." But it seems like Virginia water is doing just fine.
(WTOP/Rachel Nania)
WTOP/Rachel Nania
The bakery's red, white and black décor is reminiscent of a traditional New York deli. One of the store's bagel recipe's comes from Ukraine and dates back to 1883. In addition to bagels, Bagel City serves a variety of breakfast items, sandwiches, salads, kinishes, soups and more.
(WTOP/Rachel Nania)
WTOP/Rachel Nania
Bagel City has been a go-to for bagel lovers in Rockville since 1982. It was voted "best bagels" by readers and listeners on WTOP's 2014 Top 10 contest.
(WTOP/Rachel Nania)
WTOP/Rachel Nania
Cranberry bagels are being made at the Georgetown Bagelry. Other bagel flavors include chocolate chip, garlic, salt, granola, oatmeal raisin and more, and additional menu items include egg platters, sandwiches, burgers, salads and soups.
(WTOP/Rachel Nania)
WTOP/Rachel Nania
An employee at The Georgetown Bagelry stirs bagels as they boil. The bagels are boiled for "a minute or two" before they are baked and sold.
(WTOP/Rachel Nania)
WTOP/Rachel Nania
The Georgetown Bagelry boils its bagels before baking them. This is done to achieve a denser, chewier interior and a crunchier exterior.
(WTOP/Rachel Nania)
WTOP/Rachel Nania
Blueberry is one of the 18 bagel flavors made fresh daily at The Georgetown Bagelry. Each bagel is $1.20, or $14.40 for a dozen.
(WTOP/Rachel Nania)
WTOP/Rachel Nania
The dough for the bagels is mixed, cut and shaped into circles in the kitchen at The Georgetown Bagelry in Bethesda, Maryland.
(WTOP/Rachel Nania)
WTOP/Rachel Nania
The Bagelry makes 18 varieties of bagels each day, including black and white bagels. All of the bagels are boiled and baked in the back of the store.
(WTOP/Rachel Nania)
WTOP/Rachel Nania
The Georgetown Bagelry is regarded as one of the best bagel shops in the D.C. area. It originally opened on M Street in Georgetown in 1981, but the Bagelry is now on River Road in Bethesda, where it turns out between 400 and 450 dozen bagels a day.
(WTOP/Rachel Nania)
WTOP/Rachel Nania
Bullfrog has a giant bagel mixer -- only when WTOP stopped by, it wasn't bagel dough that was being churned. Cohen was testing out his recipe for Jewish ramen noodle -- a 24 egg yolk-per-pound pasta he plans to debut soon and serve with homemade pastrami or corned beef and mustard sauce.
"You can get it with an amazingly intense clarified chicken broth if you want," Cohen says. He also plans to have a vegan or vegetarian broth.
Cohen and Sexton say they plan to keep experimenting with new foods and developing new recipes. They also have plans to open additional locations in the future.
(WTOP/Rachel Nania)
WTOP/Rachel Nania
After "fiddling around" with a few different recipes, Cohen settled on the one that has earned Bullfrog a lot of positive reviews in recent months.
"First of all, people have always said that you can't have good bagels in D.C. because the water is no good, and you have to go up to New York because the water's so good and that's why the bagels and the pizza in New York are so good. My theory is that if the water is good enough to drink, it's good enough to bake with," Cohen says.
"I think people just needed good bagels in D.C.," says Sexton, one of the partners at Bullfrog Bagels. "Everyone's been talking for years about how you have to drive to New York; we hear all these stories about people saying they go to New York and New Jersey and bring them home because they can't find anything, so it was basically a public service; we had to fill a need."
Abby Sexton and Jeremiah Cohen are the partners behind Bullfrog Bagels. Both are native Washingtonians (Sexton went to the National Cathedral School and Cohen attended Woodrow Wilson High School), and they met in the restaurant business. After hearing about the lack of good bagels in D.C. for years, the two decided to take a stab at making their own.
(WTOP/Rachel Nania)
WTOP/Rachel Nania
Bullfrog Bagels is one of the newest bagel bakeries in the area. The company started selling its bagels at pop-up locations over the summer, but now has a storefront on H Street Northeast, which opened in late September.
(WTOP/Rachel Nania)
WTOP/Rachel Nania
