New York bagels — there’s nothing like ’em. If you’ve been spending all your summer on the East End and jonesing for city-side doughy goodness, you’re in luck this Thursday morning.
For the first time ever, Utopia Bagels will be schlepping on out to the Hamptons for a pop-up day of seededs, plains, everythings and shmears at Southampton’s FreshDirect on Main (70 Main St., Southampton, 631-204-5031).
From 9 a.m. to noon on Thursday, August 28, Utopia will bestow the East End with freshly boiled and baked plain and everything bagels, along with accompanying cream cheese. They’ll also be concocting their signature “Worth It” bagel all morning, chock-a-block with cream cheese, Nova lox, fresh tomato, red onion and capers (so our advice: Get there early!).
Utopia Bagels started in Whitestone, Queens in 1981 — one little shop in a parking lot owned by Scott Spellman and Anthony Panteleo, making bagels the old-fashioned way: boiled in a big ol’ kettle and then baked until golden in a circa 1940s carousel oven.
But what made them really stand out from the crowd were their think-outside-the-box flavors like asiago cheese, piña colada, rainbow, jalapeño-cheddar and sourdough.
Today, Spellman’s son Jesse has taken a lead roll in the business, taking the company into the next era with two other brick-and-mortar locations (Midtown Manhattan and Long Island City), as well as forming collaborations like this one with FreshDirect, the online grocery order company that opened their first and only shop in Southampton this past spring.
In addition to Utopia’s bagel favorites on hand this Thursday, FreshDirect is bringing their own contribution to customers, too, with the Fresh Catch bagel — their own signature fresh lobster salad on a Utopia bagel of choice, assuming the non-kosher combo is kosher with you. And if it’s not, there’s plenty of cream cheese to be had (and that leaves more lobster salad for us).
