Joel and Jon. The bagel mobile’s arrival in Brooklyn.
Since Saturday, New Yorkers can get their hands on Montreal’s St-Viateur Street bagels. Thanks to two adventurous Montrealers. A few weeks ago, 27-year-old Montrealer Noah Bermamoff, introduced Brooklyn to Montreal-style smoked meat when he opened Mile End. The little delicatessen is located in Brooklyn’s Boerum and is completely inspired by Montreal culinary symbols, right down to the famous bagels.
Bermamoff’s father had been FedEx-ing him bagels every night, though they often arrived up to 24 hours late because of transportation delays. He was selling them for the high price of $2.50 each or $30 per dozen. But despite the high cost, New Yorkers wanted more.
That’s when his two best friends from Montreal, businessmen Jon Leitner and Joel Tietolman, come into play. “We realized that there was an enormous demand for Montreal bagels,” said Leitner. They approached St-Viateur Bagel and came to an agreement. Last Friday, they filled Tietolman’s Volkswagen with 90 dozen bagels and drove to Brooklyn. At 8 a.m., the bagels had reached Bermamoff’s restaurant. The quickly sold out. From now on, every Friday, the same thing will happen. “We like the road trips a bit too much,” said Leitner.
More after the jump!
Noah Bernamoff before the opening of his new Brooklyn restaurant, Mile End.
The duo has rented a truck for the next run and will hit the road with about 150 dozen bagels, which they will sell for $2 each or $20 for a dozen when they are ordered in advance on their website. As a comparison, the St-Viateur Bagel equivalent in New York, H and H, sells their bagels for $16.80 per dozen.
The New York Times City Blog is already talking about them. And so does New York magazine. The NYTimes recently had their journalists vote on which city makes the better bagels, with the Big Apple’s offerings unsurprisingly coming out on top. On the Mile End’s website, Montreal bagels are described as “smaller, denser, chewier, and slightly sweeter” than their New York cousins.
Leitner and Tietolman say they plan to sell the bagels in many locations in the city. “It’s a small risk we are taking, it takes a lot of our energy, but it’s a project between friends and we spend every weekend in New York, we can’t complain,” said Leitner.
Since it opened, Mile End has received attention from the likes of the New York Times, Time Out, Black Book and New York Magazine, as well as blogs such as Gothamist. It was also named Paper Magazine’s restaurant of the week.
Mile End is so popular in fact that the restaurant often runs out of smoked meat before day’s end and Twitter is used to tell the public when supplies are running low. Bermamoff will soon have to expand his operation; currently he smokes his own meat, makes the pickles and smoked salmon and even serves poutine.
- Noah Bermamoff’s Mile End restaurant is located at 97A Hoyt Street near Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn’s Boerum Hill district.
Picture Marie-Joelle Parent