I was fresh off the plane, with my luggage at Southern Cross, looking for some viennoiserie at 2:30PM. Sadly there were no obvious nearby locations available, and I settled on an acceptable alternative within a short walk.
The first of two bagels I had was this absolutely loaded Salt ‘N Sauer ($15), packed with an unreasonable quantity of salted beef, a mountain of saukerkraut, and a small amount of dijon mustard on a sesame seed topped rye bagel. This was truly quite filling for something relatively compact in two-dimensional space, though true to its name was quite flavourful, erring on the edge of being too salty (but not too sauer).
After eating half of the above bagel, I then turned my attentions to the Miss U Lox ($16.50), a classical kind of smoked salmon bagel with cream cheese, pickled red onion, and cress, again on rye. This bagel was more expensive but much smaller than the other, reflecting recent increases in price across all brands for smoked salmon products. The filling was simple but clean feeling and tasty, though this did tend to mean that certain bites leant the other way into having inadequate flavour. The sweet pickles came in handy in dealing with the excess bread.
Overall I had a pretty enjoyable meal, but it turns out I was the schmuck, because I went to a bagel shop looking for ‘classical’ bagels, not realising that it was run by Asians and thus missing out on a likely good quality Asian-fusion menu. Maybe I’d try a miso tuna.
Schmucks Bagels (Collins St)
Tenancy 9/567 Collins St, Melbourne VIC 3000