c word bagels and coffee

Miss Morag has a bee in her bonnet about bagels. About a week ago she devised a mission to visit all the bakeries or cafes specialising in bagels in Brisbane, one by one, to sample their fare. Actually it's not that much of a mission. There's so few it could be achieved in one hungry day.

However the first stop on the great bagel tour yielded such bagel disappointment that the mission has been aborted in favour of baking bagels at home. MM very much enjoyed the Campos coffee and cute freckle accompaniment at C Word, and there's a great buzzy atmosphere in this Nundah Village cafe.

But the bagels didn't taste freshly-baked, nor seem like they'd been boiled. Probably because they're not baked on the premises, and because they haven't been boiled! MM was surprised to hear that a dedicated bagel cafe - one with the word 'bagel' in its name, gets all its bagels in from Melbourne (frozen) and 'steams' them as required throughout the day.

But obviously lots of people are OK with that because they've got a healthy following.

The filling in the 'combo' was fine, with sausage, tomato, cheese, egg and a tasty vegetable relish. But the bagel had the taste and texture of a regular white bread roll.

The cinnamon and raisin bagel was disappointing for the same reasons, and also because it was stone cold when it arrived to the table.

No doubt the bagel mission will resume at some stage in the near future with visits to Lavosh Bakery at Red Hill and the Bagel Nook in the city, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, you can check out MM's bagel-baking efforts.

MM would love to hear about your Brisbane bagel-eating experiences, or bagels elsewhere for that matter. I seem to recall having some pretty good ones in Prague. But maybe that was the pivo talking!