Chesapeake Bagel Bakery in Ft. Lauderdale, FL

I spent a few days in Ft. Lauderdale. While down there, I sampled some of the city's food. The motel I stayed in didn't supply breakfast because of COVID reasons, so I ventured out to find food on my first morning there. I ended up a restaurant called Chesapeake Bagel Bakery. It took me way too long to get the pun in the restaurant name...

I had the Nova-Nova sandwich. This was an everything bagel, topped with Nova lox, red onion, capers, tomato, and cream cheese. 

I very much enjoyed this sandwich. Good bagel, and they were generous with the amount of lox and toppings in the sandwich!

 

NY Food: Bagels (Pumpernickel Bagel, Zucker's Bagels & Smoked Fish, Russ & Daughters, and Liberty Bagels)

Since nobody can travel right now due to COVID-19, let's go back in time a few months and visit New York to eat. My last visit to the New York was in December for a few days. The last couple posts on this blog from New York had to do with the pizza and Indian food I ate on the trip. This post is about the Indian restaurants I visited while there. I ended up eating a lot of Indian food on my short trip.

Pumpernickel Bagel:

This was a random bagel shop I walked by in Long Island City when it was time for a bagel breakfast.

I had a whole wheat everything bagel, filled with lox cream cheese and onions.

 Zucker's Bagels and & Smoked Fish:

This bagel shop was located a few blocks away from Bryant Park. It was a chain. I ordered a sandwich called The Flatiron. This had everything seeded smoked salmon, avocado, and scallion cream cheese. I very much enjoyed this sandwich.

Russ & Daughters:

This place is a classic that I've visited before in the past. They have all sorts of delicious smoked fish here.

I had the Shteil. Smoked sable and goat cream cheese on an everything bagel.

Liberty Bagels:

This was my last bagel experience before heading back home. They were located close to the train station so I grabbed one last bagel before catching the train back to JFK. They had some interesting bagels that involved a lot of food coloring like their rainbow bagels.

They had some interesting cream cheeses as well. Can't say I've ever seen maple bacon or Oreo flavored cream cheese anywhere.

None of that matters though, because it ended up with me getting handed the wrong order. They confirmed what I ordered when I picked it up, but that's not what was in the bag. What they gave me was a sesame bagel stuffed with lox, avocado, tomato slices, onions, and capers. It wasn't a bad combination. It was almost a combination I would have enjoyed, except there was no cream cheese. Who in their right mind orders bagels with no cream cheese!? Unfortunately, I was already on the train to the airport when I opened the bag and saw I had the wrong order, so I ate it...

NY Jewish Food (Regal Kosher Deli in Plainview and Russ & Daughters in NYC)

In my travels around the New York area, I ended up eating at two restaurants serving Jewish/Kosher style foods. One was Regal Kosher Deli on Long Island and the other was Russ & Daughters in Manhattan.

Regal Kosher Deli in Plainview, NY:

Regal Kosher Deli is located in Plainview, NY on Long Island. They are a kosher deli serving pretty standard jewish foods. I ended up eating here on two occasions.

Pickles are delivered to every table upon being seated. They serve half sour and full sour pickles. Being that the half sour pickles were devoured before I could take a picture, it's obvious what everyone's favorite type of pickle is.

Bowls of coleslaw were also served with the pickles.

I tried two different types of knish on my visits here. My first knish was a plain potato filled knish. This one was square with mashed potatoes filling the flaky crust. Pretty tasty.

The spinach knish was my favorite of the two. It was round (I'm assuming the different shapes are so they can tell different fillings apart easier?), filled with a potato/spinach mix. It had more going on in terms of flavor compared to the plain knish.

On one visit I tried a corned beef sandwich. This consisted of a whole lot of sliced meat between sliced rye bread. I have to admit that these jewish deli style sandwiches are a little boring for my liking. I know cheese can't be added because of the whole kosher thing, but they are too much of the same thing.

On another visit I tried what they called a stuffed sandwich. I ordered the Corned Beef, Tongue, and Hard Boiled Egg. When the sandwich was delivered, the waiter informed me that they were out of hard boiled egg. I'm also pretty sure the menu said there should have been coleslaw on here as well, but that was missing too. Without those components, this was basically a corned beef sandwich stacked on top of a tongue sandwich. I did enjoy the novelty of eating sliced tongue. That is not a cut of meat that I eat very often.

Regal Kosher Deli was enjoyable. They may have boring sandwiches, but that's expected in a jewish deli. That aside, I did like the rest of the dining experience in here...





Russ & Daughters in NYC:

I first heard about Russ & Daughters several years ago and they have been on my list of New York foods to try ever since. It took me several more visits to the city before I finally made it to Russ & Daughters. They've been around for 101 years, so the amount of time it took me to try the restaurant was probably nothing for them.

They specialize in smoked and cured fish. Their cases are filled with all sorts of lox, smoked salmon, mackerel, sable, and other seafoods. There's also a large selection of cream cheeses, bagels, desserts, and other jewish foods for sale. Russ & Daughters was a very busy place. I waited over a half hour to put in my order. People were buying quite a bit in here as well. Almost every order placed that I heard was at least $100. Russ & Daughters is a little gold mine...

I had an everything bagel with pastrami salmon with goat cream cheese. The salmon was thinly sliced with a peppery coating on the outside. The goat cream cheese was new to me. It still had the consistency of normal cream cheese, but with the distinctive earthy flavor that seems to be in all goat cheeses. The combination of it all was delicious...

I also tried a pickle. A customer in front of me was ordering gallons of these pickles, announcing that she takes the train from Vermont to replenish her pickles every time her supply gets low. With an endorsement like that, I decided I must try one. It was a very tasty pickle, although I don't know if I'd travel from out of state for a pickle. 

Bagel Doctor West in Franklin Square, NY

While on Long Island, I had a bagel for breakfast from a restaurant called Bagel Doctor West. I suppose there is or was other Bagel Doctors in the area if they needed to add West to the end of the name. The restaurant was in a small strip mall and was typical of many of the other bagel places in the area.

I had an everything bagel with smoked salmon cream cheese. The bagel was large and tasty, although it was slightly lacking in the seed department. I always find it interesting how different places do smoked salmon cream cheese. Sometimes it's the normal color of cream cheese with bits of lox mixed in, while other times it's blended resulting in a pink cream cheese that looks like it should be some sort of dessert flavor. Bagel Doctor West did the pink cream cheese. I personally prefer the first way of doing salmon cream cheese, but I still enjoyed this bagel regardless.

Family Bagels in Floral Park, NY

When it comes to the subject of bagels, Central Florida is pretty much a bagel void except for chains like Einstein Bros or Dunkin Donuts. There are a few independent places, but they are few and far between. Long Island, NY on the other hand seems to have so many bagel shops that it almost seems like oversaturation of the bagel market. Regardless, it leaves plenty of bagels to choose from on my visits up north. This time I chose Family Bagels in Floral Park...

Family Bagels above average selection of cream cheeses.

I had an everything bagel with scallion lox cream cheese. The bagel was good and they were really generous with the cream cheese. There was lots of lox bits and plenty of scallions and it was all about $3. Not bad...

A&S Bagels in Franklin Square, NY

I bought an everything bagel with lox cream cheese from A&S Bagels in Franklin Square, NY. The bagel was really good and the cream cheese had plenty of salmon in it.

A&S Bagels is a pretty cool place. They are open 24 hours and seem to always have a line, no matter when you ride by. If you look through the door going into the back rooms, you get to see all of the bagels being made. Those machines that press the dough into a bagel shape are really interesting to watch. Only problem is that some of the help in A&S seem to be really grumpy and aren't very good at customer service...

Weekend Trip: Dunkin Donuts

Due to an unfortunate circumstance, I had to fly up to New York for the weekend. On the way to my very early flight out of Orlando International Airport, I stopped at this Dunkin Donuts in Longwood, FL at 6:00 am. I had a sesame bagel with smoked salmon cream cheese.

I also noticed that Dunkin Donuts now serves hash browns so I decided to give them a try. They resembled the hash browns served at Burger King for breakfast, only these tasted better. I saw a little brochure that said they were baked, but with the amount of grease on the potatoes, they sure didn't seem like it

Bagel Tree in Boca Raton

Bagel Tree in Boca Raton, FL seems to be the restaurant of choice for the retirees living in Century Village to have breakfast. I've eaten here in the past when visiting a Century Village resident, so this particular visit was no different.

I ordered a sesame bagel with Nova cream cheese and homefries. Now, I don't want to sound like I'm complaining about food like the average senior citizen, but my homefries were served on the plate with someone's omelet. Their omelet was supposed to come with grits, and they weren't served at all until the waiter finally returned and was reminded. Once the homefries were transferred over to my plate, I found them to be really tasty. Moving on to the bagel, I asked for it to be toasted, and it was kind of burned around the edges. The Nova cream cheese seemed really stingy with the actual nova. There wasn't enough smoked salmon in there to justify the extra charge in my opinion. So in the end, I liked the homefries. Will I return? On the next visit to a Century Village resident, most definitely!

IKEA Meatballs

I ate at the restaurant in the IKEA in Orlando, Florida. IKEA has the best food out of any eating area in any store. Where else can you get Swedish food in the same place that you can buy a couch?

After looking at the pre-made food in the cases for a while, like this Gravad Lax (next time) and all of the desserts, I ended up sharing a plate of Swedish Meatballs, served with mashed potatoes and some lingonberry jam.



The meatballs were okay, but it was the gravy on top that made them worth eating. I wouldn't think that parsley and lingonberries makes a good combination though.