The Breakfast Sandwich...and the Bialy

One Bialy with a slice of grilled tomato and melted provolone, please...

That is how I started nearly every morning on my work in NYC...with a fresh squeezed OJ, of course. This lasted nearly 10 years.  It worked out well because I traveled pretty often so when I was away, I'd have other things, like a veggie omelet with a side of salsa. (creature of habit) The provolone has to be melted and PAX used to do a nice job of putting the cheese underneath the broiler for me before placing the tomato on top.

I found a decent breakfast sandwich here, which I get every Tues/Thurs after I walk Julian to school, but does not compare. Anyway, the point of this post is that someone NEEDS to open a Bialy joint in Vancouver ASAP. Man, do I miss that outer crust, chewy middle with a hint of garlic/onion/poppy seeds in the center. By far, beats the bagel a million times over in my opinion.

I don't think greater America even knows what a Bialy is or why it's so wonderful. In fact, I don't think most New Yorkers even appreciate the goodness of a true Bialy. (footnote: while the best bagels are in Rockland County, they have fake Bialys)

See, the reason you won't find a Bialy outside of New York really is for a couple reasons:

1) Only NYC has the real thing.

2) Bialys only have a shelf life of SIX hours. Isn't that fascinating?  Therefore, they can't make them and ship them to places and they need to be eaten that day or thrown out.

Bialy, a Yiddish word short for bialystoker kuchen, from Białystok, a city in Poland, is a small roll that is a traditional dish in Polish Ashkenazi cuisine. A traditional bialy has a diameter of up to 15 cm (6 inches) and is a chewy yeast roll similar to a bagel. Unlike a bagel, which is boiled before baking, a bialy is simply baked, and instead of a hole in the middle it has a depression. Before baking, this depression is filled with diced onions and other ingredients, including (depending on the recipe) garlic, poppy seeds, or bread crumbs.

In 2002, former New York Times food writer Mimi Sheraton wrote a book dedicated to the bialy, called The Bialy Eaters: The Story of a Bread and a Lost World.