Harlem couple Andrew Martinez and Ashley Dikos opened this newer bagelry in 2017 after not finding the bagel options in the neighborhood to their satisfaction. The result is a shop with bagels that have a crisp exterior and chewy inside, made the traditional way with a 24-hour fermentation, boil, and bake. All the traditional spreads are available, as well as specialty sandwiches like the Andrew with egg, sausage bacon, Vermont maple syrup, and scallion cream cheese.

Come lunchtime, this barn of a bagel bakery boasts lines that extend out the door, eager for a taste of its bulbous and budget-priced bagels, often delivered still warm, rendering toasting unnecessary. The bagels at Absolute are a bit larger than average and glossy from their brief boil. The bright orange egg bagel is a favorite, and so is the everything bagel, best spread with the salty and smoky whitefish salad for an explosion of flavor.

Sure, Zabar’s and its stellar smoked fish is just around the corner, but the bagels here have a better chew. Lines often stretch out the door for any variety of bagel sandwiches, from standard cream cheese to lox or whitefish to bacon, egg, and cheese. Despite having a no-toasting policy for years, the shop now grumpily allows it. Plus, it’s open most nights until 8 p.m. for evening breakfast cravings.

These slightly smaller, denser bagels pull long lines each weekend of Upper East Siders eager for a morning sandwich. All the classics are there — lox, many spreads, BEC — but the menu also offers other Jewish-leaning specilaties like knishes and black and white cookies. Those who keep Kosher-ish will find plenty of meats to put in place of bacon or sausage.

The classic New York bagel shop, which first opened in 1976, has moved its original location and added a Midtown outpost — both of which still claim long lines for chewy-crusted bagels. It takes a while to pick up an order for sandwiches or a bagel with lox, but people looking to just pick up bagels and cream cheese can sneak to the back, where the bagels are still fresh and the line is much shorter.

Esteemed baker Melissa Weller, the wiz originally behind Sadelle’s offerings, is now a partner at West Village brunch destination High Street on Hudson, and she’s churning out killer bagels to the neighborhood. At $2 they’re among the more expensive options on this list, but the bespoke bagels — available in plain, salt & pepper, marbled rye, and everything — have a hefty chew and tender dough that’s increasingly uncommon in this city.

Open since 1996, Murray’s was born out of a desire for a superior neighborhood bagelry in Greenwich Village. The result is thinner, dense bagels with a crackly crust and interior chew. Beyond standard cream cheese, fish, and egg sandwiches, Murray’s also offers various meat-filled varieties such as chicken cutlet, pastrami, and salami. There’s a second location in Chelsea, too. Owner Adam Pomerantz is also the guy behind Leo’s down in the Financial District — and his brother Matt (there’s intriguing bad blood there) owns Zucker’s in Tribeca, both also worthy bagel destinations.

Bagel purists won’t like this place in the East Village, with its rainbow of cream cheese options (and its literal rainbow-colored bagels), but it has long lines for a reason: a massive variety of menu items that’ll serve basically any appetite. It’s the only bagel place out-of-town friends have heard of, but there’s a reason for that — and it’ll teach them to never order a New York bagel toasted and to always, always carry enough cash for a coffee and a BEC.

Head for Forest Hills Bagel for a more comfortable bagel experience. The interior is laid out like a diner, and an opulent counter display offers an unusually large range of flavored creams cheeses and their surrogates, including low-fat dairy spreads and those made from whipped tofu. The bagels remain the focus, however, with a very nice cinnamon raisin for sweet bagel lovers, and poppy and sesame bagels that don’t stint on the seeds.

For the better part of the last 100 years, the only way to get a bagel at Russ & Daughters was to wait in line — out the door and around the corner. Today this New York institution has three additional locations at the Jewish Museum, the Brooklyn Navy Yards, and on Orchard Street. Their bagels and bialys — hand-rolled and boiled in-house — are soft and chewy, but sturdy enough to hold their own against toppings like cream cheese, smoked fish, or pastrami.

Bialys — a flat round roll with onions chopped up in the center — are a grand New York tradition, and Kossar’s is the ultimate place to score some. New owners have updated the shop, which opened in 1936, but they still use the same original recipe.

Newfangled bagelry Shelsky’s has all the bagel classics in small, dense form, but it sports a few unusual outliers, especially its numbing Sichuan peppercorn bialy with black sesame seeds and a chile crisp cream cheese. It’s indicative of the appetizing shop’s more modern founding, with extra care taken in ways such as using a sourdough starter in the bagels, actual egg in the egg bagels, and a chopped cheese available on a bialy for lunch.

Some say this tiny, Park Slope bakery serves the city’s best bagel — crispy, chewy, and robust. It first opened in 1985 and serves a standard menu of bagel classics. The postcard bakery is lined with a couple bodega-style fridges up front with juices, doesn’t have any seats, and only takes cash, but the bagels are usually hot and fresh.