Brooklyn Water Bagels adds more hits to menu
Our Breakfast Club president tries (too much of ) the upgraded offerings.
As the paper’s self-appointed Breakfast Club president, I often have a lot on my plate.
That was never more true than when I visited the Original Brooklyn Water Bagel Co. in Boynton Beach to get the scoop on the chain’s new menu. Holy provolone! In short order, the staff rolled out five breakfast sandwiches and another four new lunch offerings. Here came a quartet of new frozen drinks, followed by a muffin, an omelet and three flavors of silky-smooth cold brew coffee. All for me! (And some crumbs for my Breakfast Club colleague, Post photographer Bruce Bennett).
It was an awfully sweet assignment for a Thursday afternoon. I’m already addicted to Brooklyn Water Bagels’ iced coffee, which is chilled with ice cubes made of joe, and I crave their salt bagels like a hipster covets new tattoos.
I’m not alone. Founded in Delray Beach in 2009, the company is a local favorite, with eight busy Palm Beach County locations — and more on the way.
The management team is confident they can compete in the crowded morning-meal market, says Executive Vice President George Wooten. “Anybody who does breakfast is our competition. But nobody does what we do. We truly artisan-bake and handcraft our bagels.”
The company boasts that its water filtration system is the key to the tastes-like-New-York appeal of its bagels.
Wrong, says Vinny Cucinello, the company’s “chief bagel craftsman.” The secret ingredients, he says, are “love and passion.”
Cucinello grew up in the Bronx (shhhh, don’t tell anyone), “where we always had bagels hot and in the bag on Sunday mornings. That onion bagel smell was so good.”
Cucinello’s bagels are, of course, what breakfast is built around here. The best of the signature sandwiches, for my money? The Williamsburg — smoked salmon, cream cheese, sliced tomato and red onion on a plain bagel. As the cock- tail hour approached, I chowed down on it. Breakfast for happy hour!
I washed down the Williamsburg with sips of four new frozen drinks. There’s not a bad apple in the bunch: Raspberry Lemonade, Arctic Blueberry, Caramel Freeze and Chocolate Blast.
It went downhill from there, but everything was so delicious, I didn’t want to lose the feedbag.
Did I eat entirely too much of the decadent Raspberry Cheesecake Muffin? Yes, I did.
Did I return, repeatedly, to my plastic cup of Blueberry Crumble Cold Brewsta? Mm-hmmm.
In the name of lunchtime research, did I take too many bites of the Turkey Reuben, which is served on a Black Russian Flagel? Guilty.
Unfortunately, I didn’t leave room for a taste of the new Everything Cookie, dotted with chocolate, toffee, butterscotch and cinnamon chips.
Gut check: next time. The Original Brooklyn Water Bagels company has locations in Jupiter, Palm Beach Gardens, Lake Worth, Boynton Beach, Delray Beach and Boca Raton. For a complete list, see BrooklynWaterBagels. com. ... when I did a taste-test at the Original Brooklyn Water Bagel Co. At a single location, the employees fill and empty anywhere from 140 to 280 silicon trays of ice cubes per day.“The reason other places don’t do it is it’s hard,” says George Wooten, executive VP.
Roastmaster Christopher Conover oversees the process in Delray Beach. He’s also the developer of the new cold brew.
Says Wooten, “It’s not got the cache it once had.”A possible replacement: a live video feed of the Brooklyn Bridge.