The Brooklyn Cafe is presently the only kosher cafe in New Hampshire, hidden just off Route 16 in a small plaza. They offer two smoked salmon bagel choices as seen on the menu below: Nova Lox and Double Smoked Nova Lox. This is probably a good time to discuss some of the different types of salmon preparations commonly offered on bagels. This post _[1] from the Goldbelly blog provides some clarifying details:

• Traditional Lox (aka belly lox) is cured in salt brine, not smoked. It’s rather salty.
• Smoked salmon is salt-cured (not brined) and cold-smoked. It’s much less salty than lox.
• Nova is also salt-cured and cold-smoked, with milder flavor and smoother texture than traditional lox. It’s namesake is the source location; Nova Scotia. It’s considered particularly desirable as far as smoked salmon goes.

Apparently these terms are used somewhat interchangeably in common parlance, but that should help clarify what we have today for review.

For an extra three bucks, I chose the double-smoked nova option coming in at $13.99. For top-notch salmon at a kosher joint, it seemed reasonable.

Here’s a topside view of the bagel. I chose a poppyseed, which I do think is the superior bagel for salmon.

Separating the two halves, we can see that they gave an incredibly generous portion of salmon with a schmear. Athough the total amount of salmon is quite hefty, the individual slices are thin and manageable; a plus.

Looking at a half of the bagel, we can see the toppings I opted for: red onion, capers, tomato, and cucumber pickle. I don’t think I’ve had bits of pickle on a bagel with lox before, but I was interested to try.

In a word - fantastic. The bagel was toasted perfectly. A crisp exterior matched with a chewy interior. I think this style of toasting is favored in New York, but I’ve never been to NYC. I heard J. Kenji Lopez-Alt describe toasting as the great equalizer of bagels. Pristine bagels and mediocre alike end up meeting somewhere in the middle through toasting. I’ve never had an untoasted bagel from any shop. I don’t know if a lifetime of eating toasted bagels would prejudice me to freshly boiled and baked ones. That’s a matter for another time.

The double-smoked nova lox was mouth-watering. A very soft and smoky flavor that lightly lingered in my mouth after each bite. By comparison, many other lox (loxes? loxen?) I’ve tried feel far too salty. The fish was incredibly fresh. I don’t know if bagel joints usually cut the salmon to order or if it’s done ahead of time, but the freshness of this salmon is nearly unmatched for me.

The cream cheese is also worth bragging about at Brooklyn. Rich, creamy, and fluffy. Almost textured like “whipped” cream cheese, but I don’t think it was. Possibly the best cream cheese I’ve had on a bagel. Good enough to make me want to swear off any future tubs of Philadelphia. As for the toppings, they matched well but simply amplified the salmon. Not too much to say. The pickle bits were much less intrusive than I expected. They added just a little hint of sour that made things more interesting. As far as pickles go, they were very light on the sour/briny flavor.

Rating: 96/100

I think I could eat one of these for breakfast every day and not tire from it. The quality of the salmon was impeccable, matched only by the Pacific salmon I tried at Frolik. This was a very different type of salmon than that - much lighter and less smoky, but buttery smooth. The perfect nova lox paired with a perfectly cooked bagel combine for an unbeatable bite.

External Links

1. https://blog.goldbelly.com/lox-smoked-salmon-nova-whats-the-difference/

A little over a week after the last review, I had the pleasure of stopping into Providence Bagel in Kingston, RI. I notice that the visit marked exactly 1 year since the first salmon bagel I reviewed! I originally made chaseleinart.com to act as a tech and linguistics blog, but found myself without any immediate ideas. Not wanting to waste a perfectly good domain, I started posting content for another favorite in my life, salmon on bagels. I recently learned about a few new localish spots, so I’ll be visiting them shortly.

I was staying near Kingston, RI for the 2023 Viola da Gamba Society of America Conclave. I play several musical instruments with varying proficiency: the cello, bass guitar, double bass, and mandolin. I was already familiar with viols as a cousin to the violin family, and learned of an annual gathering for viols not too far from my home. The intro class was advertised as free for locals, so I couldn’t resist. I had a great time playing the instrument and intend to rent one, learning to play it further.

You’ll have to forive the poor image quality of the receipt, but the Class Lox sandwich came in at $9.99. Pretty reasonable by my standards.

I opted to get mine on poppyseed. It included cream cheese, white onion, red tomato, capers, and of course lox.

The best thing about this is the bagel itself. It’s truly fresh and fantastic. The outside is perfectly toasted, while the inside is very soft. The salmon is also fresh and very light in flavor. Ordinarily, I don’t think that tomatoes add too much to a salmon bagel, but in this case, they work pretty well with the white onion and capers. The onion wasn’t too overpowering and each bite had a nice little “pop” from the poppyseeds encrusted on the bagel. For 10 bucks, this is a great bagel. The salmon portion is plenty, but not overflowing. The superb quality of the bagel adds a point for me. I wish I could say more, but I’m writing this from some bullet points typed onto my phone while eating in my car. If you’re ever in the Providence area, I believe they have multiple locations. Highly recommended!

Rating: 89/100

Stroll is not a new restaurant for me, but I was completely unaware that they offered a smoked salmon bagel. I’ve been to Stroll a number of times and am always made happy by their pastries, soups, drinks, and more. Of course I had to try their smoked salmon bagel after hearing about it.

Salmon, Cream Cheese, Red Onion, and Capers on a Bagel..doesn’t get much better than that. There were several bagel types available, but I decided that an everything bagel would be my best choice. I was actually quite pleased with the price of $9.95, which is about as good as it gets in the New Hampshire Seacoast as of 2023.

Note the rather large cuts of salmon hanging outside of the bagel. The bagel itself was very well toasted. Just a bit crisp on the outside, with the soft interior allowing some give during a bite.

The ingredients were very well balanced. The red onion was very cut into very thin slivers which blended in with the other components. The onion itself offered a surprising sweetness that complemented the smokiness of the salmon. Speaking of, the salmon was smokier than many I’ve eaten on a bagel before. I’ll assume it was hot-smoked rather than cold-smoked. Much of the salmon I’ve eaten on a bagel has been cold-smoked, which leaves the salmon brighter and fresher, pairing nicely with capers and raw red onion. In this case, the salmon was very smoky, which married well with the very prominent toasted garlic flavor on the everything bagel as well as the slight sweetness of the red onion. Although the salmon flavor profile (i know that sounds pretentious, but I don’t have a better word) differed from many other salmon and lox bagels I’ve eaten, it was a welcome change of pace. If you can’t tell from the image below, I was very pleased to dig into this one and would recommend it for anyone.

Rating: 88/100

Frolik is a restaurant situated on the fifth floor of the Motif hotel in Seattle. The Motif greatly annoyed me by forcing me to wait an hour for my reserved room - even after the check-in time. Thankfully, their food offerings were able to assuage my anger. As you might expect, Seattle is more expensive than the New Hampshire Seacost in basically every definable dimension, with the possible exception of lobster rolls. Thankfully, I didn’t find any and therefore wasn’t forced to consider how they would have made it to the PNW. $17 would be a very expensive salmon bagel in NH, but I think it was justified.

My bagel choice was made on my behalf, with an everything bagel is the default. That’s fine by me.

I dunno if it’s obvious, but the amount of salmon provided was gargantuan. This necessitates that the bagel be eaten in two halves openface, not as a sandwich. The toppings were simple: heirloom tomato, whipped cream cheese, and red onion, with a lemon slice on the side.

It would be difficult for me to overstate how good this bagel was. The quality of the salmon was unmatched by literally anything I’ve ever had. Although I’ve never been to NYC, they claim the best bagels and/or lox bagels. With the supreme quality of PNW salmon, I have to wonder if that claim is with merit. I’ve never been to NYC, but I suspect although their bagels themselves may be top-notch, there is no comparison to this salmon. I found no need to use the provided lemon slice, because the salmon itself had a wonderful bright citrus flavor. The pickled red onion was perfect. Absolutely no sharp onion flavor, just fresh brine. Capers were notably absent, but entirely unnecessary. Each half of the bagel was piled with what would make a generous salmon portion for an entire sandwich. The bagel was perfectly toasted. A nice crisp exterior, but the bagel gives easily to a bite.

Rating: 95/100

I worry that I’ve set myself up for failure with this out of 100 scale, but we’ll keep it going for now. I reserve the right to rate over 100 if some divine bagel from the heavens reaches me, or may otherwise convert existing reviews to a leaderboard. For now, I’ll just state simply that this is the best salmon bagel I’ve ever had, and I weep for what missed opportunities may lie in Seattle. I will likely visit in the future and review other offerings at my next opportunity. For now, we’re back to the East Coast.

If you take a gander at my receipt, you won’t see the price for a Smoked Salmon Sandwich. I should have learned from recent experiences that takeout receipts don’t always include line-item prices, but I payed a reasonable $9.99 for my sandwich. Not too shabby - only fifty cents more than our friends at Loxsmith in Dover charge for theirs.

I elected to choose the eponymous “works” bagel, which seemed to include sesame, salt, poppyseed, and garlic, but I wouldn’t stake my life on that assessment.

This one had the interesting usage of veggie creamcheese, which may not be standard, but I think was actually quite pleasant in the context of a works bagel sandwich.

I wish I had taken more photos, but I ate this one on my lunch break and was in a hurry. Nevertheless, I felt compelled to write this review for my people. The toppings included red onion, capers, and tomato, as well as some superb smoked salmon. The Works Cafe website indicates that their salmon is “cold-smoked”. I couldn’t tell you whether that genuinely impacts the final product, but I was a great fan of their salmon. Perhaps the only detraction would be that the bagel was toasted just barely beyond my preference. Ironic given our last review’s detraction for an untoasted bagel.

Rating: 88/100

Very well-made sandwich with great balance of toppings and great salmon. Were the bagel toasted just a tad less, it would have been nearly perfect. Still, an excellent and different sandwich.

On the whole, Earth’s Harvest has a high quality and intriguing menu for Dover, if a bit expensive. The virtue of a Banh Mi sandwich is that it’s a cheap yummy bite…not a $15 luxury.

If you take a gander at my receipt, you won’t see the price for a Smoked Salmon Bagel from Earth’s Harvest, but I’ll simply tell you that it was $12. That’s to say, close to 50% more than our friends over at Bubby’s. One could get 3 Lox Sandwiches at Bubby’s for only a few more shekels than 2 Smoked Salmon Bagels at Earth’s Harvest….

Another thing - our previous two reviews have been for lox bagels whereas this is smoked salmon. Smoked salmon and lox are both cured or brined, but as the name suggests, smoked salmon is then smoked afterwards.

As you can see, I opted for an everything bagel today. I think between plain and everything that I made the better choice.

This one differed from Bubby’s and Loxsmith in the toppings. We have red onion, tomato, sprouts, cucumber, capers, and of course smoked salmon, and cream cheese.

I was interested to newly try and review this one, because I’ve had it several times in the past, and had certain concerns on several of those visits. In the past, I often found that the volume of sprouts on the bagel has been overwhelming. Several times during prior visits, half or more of the sprouts would fall onto the plate from the imbalance of the sandwich. I’m relieved to say that this sandwich wasn’t overburdend with sprouts. In spite of that, I do have a few gripes with this sandwich today. The most notable is the toasting of the bagel - it’s nearly absent. The bagel, apart from being warm, is nearly indistinguishable from an off the shelf untoasted bagel, barring the house-made quality. The doughiness and dryness of the bagel weaken its value in the sandwich tremendously, in my opinion. Additionally, not all toppings were as represented as I would have liked. I initially suspected that the sandwich didn’t include capers, but found some a few bites in.

Rating: 69/100

I love salmon, so it’s hard to dislike any employment of the fish, but I think this sandwich had a few flaws. Were the bagel better toasted and the toppings more evenly distributed, the sandwich would have been greatly improved. I’ll probably revisit Earth’s Harvest in a future review to see if anything is changed.

I live in walking distance from Loxsmith Bagels, so it’s immediately appealing as a destination. I frankly haven’t tried many things on their menu apart from the lox bagel, which is fine because that’s what this is all about.

If you take a gander at my receipt, you’ll see that The Classic will set you back $9.50. Maybe a little pricey in my opinion, but eating out in general is becoming much more costly, so hardly unexpected.

The sandwich doesn’t have a generous portion of salmon, but it also doesn’t skimp out. The sandwich includes cream cheese, capers, and onion. I actually think it’s pretty well balenced

The sandwich itself is pretty good. I don’t think any one ingredient stood out particularly. The portion sizes were appropriate and contributed to the balance of the sandwich. I’ve certainly had a sandwich before that is so loaded that half the filling spills out while eating. That wasn’t an issue here. The salmon wasn’t overpowering, but blended in nicely, and was contrasted by the brine and sharpness of the capers and onion. I got mine on a sesame bagel, which seems to be a pattern for me - maybe in future reviews I’ll try poppyseed. The bagel was actually toasted nicely. The inside of the bagel was soft and flexible, contrasting well with the crispy exterior.

Rating: 83/100

Overall, a very nice sandwich. That seems it should be a given for a place called Loxsmith Bagels. I would certainly order it again.

Anyway. I’m going to eat as many bagels with some type of salmon on them and write reviews on them.

My first review will be for the Lox Sandwich available at Bubby’s Bagels and Deli in Dover, NH. What can be said of Bubby’s? Well, they’re located inside the train station in Dover, NH. I personally think that’s pretty cool. They also have tasty rugelach, which I haven’t found anywhere else on the NH Seacoast.

If you take a gander at their menu, you’ll see that the Lox Sandwich comes in at $8.25. I don’t think that’s too bad for this type of sandwich these days.

Taking a look at the interior of the sandwich, you can see that the salmon portion you get is pretty generous. The sandwich includes cream cheese, tomato, capers, and onion. In my mind, that is the perfect set of toppings for a sandwich like this. Not too much - not too little.

The sandwich itself is great. The onion isn’t so strong as to skew the flavor profile, the capers add some nice brine, and the salmon has a bright taste. I got mine on a sesame bagel, which I think is a good choice. The bagel was toasted just the right amount. Not so little as to make me question whether they toasted it at all, and not so much as to make it crispy or crunchy.

Rating: 91/100

I’ve had other lox/smoked salmon bagels in Dover, but haven’t reviewed them yet. I’ll cut to the chase and suggest that Bubby’s has my favorite in town, unless the others I intend to later review have since upped their game. Keep up the good work.