Hyde Park's Bagel Breakthrough

posted by chicago pop

Hyde Park Scores Major Bagel Asset; Zimmer Provided Vision, Zalevski & Horvath Supplied Execution

Brain function requires quick calories. There are a lot of quick calories in bagels. University research communities achieve optimum brain function when fueled with lots of bagels.

The above syllogism establishes one of the foundational truths of University life. Behind the research grants, the search for donors, the battles over funding, it all boils down to bagels. If you've got them, you can go farther, faster.

If you don't have them, well, it's just harder. So we expect great things from the assembled minds of the University of Chicago now that Hyde Park-Kenwood has made its great bagel breakthrough: Zalevski & Horvath Market Cafe has decided to round out its delicatessen-ess by offering bagels on the weekends.

For those of you who remember last year's Great Hyde Park Bagel Hunt Part 1 and Part 2, it was then determined that there is a great, pent up reservoir of unmet demand for real bagels in the neighborhood, and it wasn't being met by any of the local options.

At the time, we concluded that the best of Hyde Park's limited selection was available at otherwise questionable Orly's. We weren't necessarily satisfied with this, it was just the best we could find. If you don't bother to get out and eat a real bagel once in a while, over a period of time you might be able to convince yourself that Orly's makes a real bagel.

But those days are over, we're happy to say. We've taste-tested a batch of Zalevski and Horvath Market Cafe's glorious, aromatic, chewy, and just plain delicious bagels today and we're still feeling the glow.

Clockwise from Upper Left: Plain, Poppy Seed, Onion, and Everything Bagels from Zalevski and Horvath Market Cafe

Z&H's Samuel Darrigrand tells us that University President Zimmer convinced him it was time to make the move when he observed that there was "a lot of bagel-shaped bread" in Hyde Park, but no bagels. After an initial stint distributing bagel-shaped bread from Orly's, Z&H decided to throw their own dough in the vat, and not long afterwards found a cook that really seems to know what they're doing.

Taste Test Results


This onion bagel just looks like a bagel. Its lumpy, has an irregular hole in the middle, and has a gnarled, wrinkled skin. It does not look like a fat little balloon or a doughnut. Like the other samples, this one was completely blitzed with flavoring. So far, so good.

Let's cut it open.


This bagel is hard to hold while you cut it, because it's so moist and floppy. The knife tears the bread inside, leaving a ragged edge, which is good, and indicates that this is not a muffin, not a biscuit, but a punchy, chewy bagel. And when both sides fall apart, a pleasant, sweet odor immediately rises from the dough. Perhaps a little honey in the water during boiling, in the Montreal tradition?

Only on toasting does the exterior of the Z&H bagel crispen, and only moderately, while the interior retains its moist density. The sweetness first detected on slicing the bagel survived the toasting and comes through in the mouth.

You Know You Want This.

Good news is hard to find these days. So we'll take what we can get, and this is pretty solid. So we salute the historic synergy activated by Zimmer and carried out by the gang at Z&H, who are doing their part to bring the delicatessen back to the city where it belongs.