Weekly Review: Kleinsky's
Authentic NY-style bagel sandwiches, by way of Cape Town.
Quick hit: Great bagels, perfect for breakfast or lunch, with all sorts of NY-inspired fillings.
Details: Walk-in. Mayfair. £.
Restaurant website. More on Instagram.
Find it on Google Maps. 39 N Audley St, W1K 6ZW.
A while back, colleagues very kindly gifted me a baking course at Bread Ahead in Borough Market. I love to cook, and I can just about get by with a recipe or an occasional self-imposed invention test. But I cannot bake. Can’t do it. And I don’t really enjoy it, either. Baking is too technical for me. Too exact. Too much like chemistry.
So, needless to say, bread making is the worst of all. Successfully creating bread from flour and yeast is quite literally an act of chemistry.
But at my age, I’m fairly comfortable with my many shortcomings.
Still, I was excited about Bread Ahead, which sounded like an adventure, and from their litany of wonderful-sounding course options, I decided to enrol in “New York Baking.” Mostly, I wanted to learn how to make those wonderful soft pretzels that you get on every Big Apple street corner, but are virtually unknown in London.
We also learned to make bagels. New York style.
Bagels have a long history in London. But those bagels you get from Brick Lane really aren’t to my taste. They lack the airy-ness and real flavour of a good New York bagel.
The difference, it turns out, is lye. After baking, NY bagels are boiled, briefly, in a lye-infused mixture.
Used in less-capable hands, it’s seriously poisonous, like much of New York.
Deployed by qualified bakers, well-trained in the outer boroughs, it results in a wonderful, lighter dough. (And I should say that hardly anyone uses actual lye anymore. There are similar compounds that do much the same job.)
So, New York bagels are better. Sorry Brick Lane.
And until recently, they have been hard to find in London. Now there are at least a couple of good options.
Charlotte Ivers covered the first in a recent review. It’s Bagels in Primrose Hill sounds truly yummy. But it’s horribly inconvenient for me, so I’m unlikely to get there.
On the other hand, Kleinsky’s is just around the corner from Bond Street station, which means I get there swiftly via the Jubilee Line or the Lizzie Line, grab a sack of bagels with sides and be gone.
And stupendously good bagels they are, too.
Like any good NY bagel place, Kleinsky’s offers bagels with a number of classic flavours: Plain, onion, poppy, sesame, and everything, among others.
For breakfast, you can go classic with cream cheese or lox or bacon or whatever.
But for lunch, the menu really comes into its own. All sorts of excellent fillings are available.
There’s hot pastrami, egg mayo, schnitzel, and BLT.
I went for a reuben bagel. Authentic NY-style corned beef (aka salt beef in the UK) with cheese, sauerkraut, and sauce. Perfect toasted. Awesome.
We also tried sliced turkey with lettuce, mayo, mustard, and pickle. Thick with turkey. Fresh tomato. Sharp pickle. Brilliant.
And the tuna melt. Yummy.
There’s homemade, deli-style potato salad with wonderful notes from dill and other herbs. And homemade dill pickles, a rarity in London, but the perfect accompaniment.
On the Saturday I visited, the crowd was heavily weighted towards ex-pat Americans. Mostly doing take-away, as I was.
But there are a few inside tables, perfect for a bagel and a coffee, and a lovely outside terrace, great for a bagel on a sunny day.
In my experience, bagels are perfect for a Professional Lunch. You can grab a sackful and carry them anywhere. Add some potato salad, pickles, and a few bags of crisps, and you’ve got a perfect lunch buffet.
Kleisky’s was originally founded in Cape Town, but it’s as authentic as any place you might find in Brooklyn, the Bronx, or Queens. You might hear a South African accent, but that won’t stop you think that you’ve been transported to New York.
Thanks for reading Professional Lunch. Disagree about NY vs Brick Lane bagels? Would love to hear your view in the comments. And let me know your favourite bagel joint. Please subscribe if you haven’t already.