Native Brooklynite declares Framingham place's bagels are to die for

But it's never a good idea to start off a review by advertising your "credentials". You lived in Brooklyn ten years ago? Great, but as five minutes scrolling through any random set of Yelp reviews will tell you, most people know sweet FA about pick-your-cuisine-or-foodstuff, regardless of where they're from. How to write better food reviews, courtesy of yours truly.

I’ve been known to grab a quick breakfast at Dunkin’ Donuts on the way to work.

This author cannot be trusted to evaluate food.

The article puts front and center a pet peeve of mine.

NY bagels are good (allegedly) because of the water (which, as the author notes, comes from reservoirs upstate).

The store owner then goes on to confound this principle by talking about people going "home to Long Island" and bringing back bagels to freeze.

Here's the thing: most or all of the water in Long Island (using the definition that most people use, i.e., Nassau and Suffolk Counties) does not come from upstate. It comes from ground water aquifers under said island which have little in common geologically (and accordingly, taste-wise) with the water collected in the upstate reservoirs and fed into the NYC system.

Now I realize that people going to LI could be driving to NYC for the bagels, but I think that this is unlikely (I have lots of experience with that drive - if you are going to LI, you avoid as much as NYC as you possibly can). Further, and irrespective of the foregoing, lots of people seem to lump Long Island-made bagels in with NYC-made bagels as being either the same or substantially the same anyway. If this is the case (and for the record, I think the bagels in both locations are very nice), I just don't see how it can be the water.

Incidentally, the same applies to pizza (and, in particular, the crust).

but the OJ is the best thing in that place

...bagel conversation falls to the "No True Scotsman" fallacy almost immediately. "A TRUE NY bagel is... blah blah blah." It just never fails. I'm beginning to the think the NY bagel is more of a Platonic Idea than it is a real, tangible, edible thing. Perfect as it is conceptualized, always imperfect in the actuality of its physical iteration.

But, seriously, keep your cucumbers off of my lox/schmear.