I'm a New Yorker who tried 5 plain bagels from grocery-store chains and ranked them from worst to best
Ted Berg
- I tried and ranked five plain bagels from different grocery stores to find the best one.
- Trader Joe's plain bagels left much to be desired, and the L'Oven Fresh version was just OK.
As a New Yorker and a longtime food writer, I'm particular about bagels from my local neighborhood shops. But sometimes, convenience calls for supermarket bagels.
I taste-tested store-bought bagels from Aldi, Costco, Trader Joe's, and Whole Foods to see which sells the best ones.
To eliminate as many variables as possible, I opted for plain bagels and topped them all with a layer of the same variety of whipped cream cheese. Toasting times varied based on the size of the bagel and the whims of my toaster, but I attempted to brown them all to similar levels.
Here's how they stacked up.
I started with Trader Joe’s plain bagels.
Right from the jump, I thought Trader Joe's plain bagels were unimpressive.
The packaging boasts of a "golden-brown exterior crust," but it was the lightest in color of all the bagels, and there didn't seem to be anything special about the exterior.
The outside was soft and squishy to the touch, but not in the springy way I like my bagels to be.
The bagels also seemed a bit flat, which didn't seem bagel-like. When I cut one in half, the excess bread was forced out of the sides, making the bagel look almost foamy.
These were my least favorite of the bunch.
Trader Joe's plain bagels seemed to be fresh, but even after toasting, they didn't have a lot of texture.
I also didn't find the bagels had much flavor — they sort of felt like a really thick toast made with unsatisfactory bread.
Of the five bagels I tried, this was the only one I'd turn down if offered again.
I moved on to the L’Oven Fresh presliced plain bagels from Aldi.
The L'Oven Fresh presliced bagels looked like they might be found at a continental breakfast buffet at a chain hotel.
The bagels' exteriors seemed very slick, and despite being presliced, I thought the halves were still hard to pull apart.
Aldi's bagels were decent.
The L'Oven Fresh plain bagels indeed tasted like something you'd get at a hotel breakfast: inoffensive and sort of delicious.
There was a pleasant bit of chewiness, but I wasn't a huge fan of the aftertaste. Ultimately, it was an adequate delivery system for cream cheese.
The L'Oven Fresh bagels made an earnest effort, but to me, this was more of a roll.
The Whole Foods plain bagels were almost pretzel-like.
The Whole Foods bagel was the largest of any of the ones I tried — at least by circumference — and had the darkest exterior.
But its weight felt wrong. It was very light and had a nice yeasty aroma, making it seem more like a pretzel than a classic bagel.
I'd use the Whole Foods plain bagels to make a sandwich.
As I suspected, the Whole Foods bagel was very airy.
The dark crust, once toasted, offered a lot of texture and the interior of the bagel was adequately chewy. I didn't think they had a ton of flavor, even by the standards of plain bagels, but they had a hint of sweetness.
These didn't have the density I usually look for in bagels, but I thought they were well-suited to be the buns of cold-cut sandwiches, as they weren't overwhelmingly bready.
Trader Joe’s artisan kettle-boiled plain bagels looked fancy.
At first glance, Trader Joe's artisan kettle-boiled plain bagels were puffy and craggily. Similar to the chain's other bagels, they were also very light in color.
I cut them in half to reveal a brilliant landscape of nooks and crannies their regular cousins didn't have.
Trader Joe's artisan bagels felt like an upgrade.
Unlike all the previous bagels, the artisan Trader Joe's offering had the springy, chewy texture I associate with traditional boiled and baked New York-style bagels.
Though they might have been a touch short on flavor, I thought they were so much better than the standard Trader Joe's bagels.
In my opinion, the artisan kettle-boiled bagels definitely were of higher quality than the store's regular plain version.
Lastly, I tried the Kirkland Signature plain bagels.
Though items at Costco typically come in large quantities for remarkable prices, the Kirkland Signature bagels weren't especially inexpensive compared to what I usually get at the budget warehouse.
There wasn't an option to buy only one pack, so I purchased two bags of six Kirkland Signature bagels.
Frustratingly, the packages were sealed with a piece of tape, so I also needed to find my own twist-ties to cinch them back up.
Packaging aside, they seemed like appetizing bagels, brilliantly brown and more substantial than most on this list.
Costco's plain bagels were my winner.
The Kirkland Signature bagels were definitely the best of the bunch, in my opinion. They were appropriately dense, perfectly chewy, and seemed very fresh.
The flavor was fairly subtle, but there was a nice maltiness and yeasty-ness to these that all the other supermarket bagels lacked.
Would I choose them over a baker's dozen from a legitimate local bagel shop? No. But they're about ¼ the price, and I might successfully pass them off as local bagels if I happen to be serving them on a day I also go shopping at Costco.
This story was originally published on October 16, 2023, and most recently updated on November 4, 2024.
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