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Curious City

How Bagels Got To Chicago And Where To Eat Them

Curious City

WBEZ Chicago

Society & Culture, Education, Public, Chicago, Arts, City, Radio, Curious, Investigation

4.8642 Ratings

🗓️ 8 April 2021

⏱️ 26 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Curious City reporter Monica Eng and editor Alexandra Salomon try to help one listener who claims NY has better bagels find some good ones in Chicago. Plus, we trace the local history of the donut-shaped bread: From its arrival in the U.S. with Jewish immigrants to mass production to a renaissance of local artisanal bakers who have gone back to the traditional way of making them.

Transcript

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0:00.0

You know, Monica, normally we get all these questions into curiosity, and I get really excited to, you know, investigate something that I didn't know the answer to, learn something new.

0:12.2

I have to say, this week, question, it's hit a little bit of a nerve.

0:17.8

Yeah, Alexandra, I can sort of tell by the look on your face because there's someone in

0:22.0

Chicago who is not crazy about our local bagels. Her question specifically is, why aren't there any

0:28.8

good bagels in Chicago? Her name is Elaine Clary. I've lived here for a long time, and I've never had a

0:35.6

good bagel. I have had good bagels in New York and mostly on the

0:41.1

East Coast other parts of the country, but I've never had a good bagel in Chicago. So Monica,

0:45.3

you know, I've also lived here a long time. I'm from here, which means I've eaten my fair share

0:50.9

of Chicago bagels. I've also, I went to school in New York, so I have tasted

0:55.2

those kind of mushy New York bagels, you know, the ones that you get in all the little deli

1:00.0

shops, kind of oversized, whatever. So I've eaten, I've eaten those New York bagels. Yeah,

1:06.4

and Elaine, she's wrong. Well, you're going to love what else she has to say. My family is also Jewish,

1:12.9

so I am always very disappointed in the bagel offering. So, you know, Monica, I know I was kind of

1:21.3

mad, frankly, when I first heard this because it, it, I do love. You're a proud Chicagoan.

1:26.9

It's right. And, you know, my family's also

1:29.5

Jewish. And the bagel is literally, you know, you have a bagel at every family gathering, birth,

1:36.2

weddings, a bris, the Shiva, you know, the, the ritual that we do after somebody dies. There's

1:42.5

always the bagel tray. You eat bagels off the

1:45.1

bagel tray for seven days. So bagels are pretty meaningful to me. They're at every family occasion.

1:51.8

And I think we have some pretty amazing bagels here in Chicago, frankly. Okay. So what should we do

1:58.7

about it? You know, in Judaism, we have this tradition.

2:02.1

It's known as Sadaka.

...

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