When you're getting your Sunday morning bagels, give a little love to The Giving Tree of Love. Leave a heart = a free meal to someone in need. #community #spreadthelove #beaconbagel #beaconny #givingtreeoflove (at Beacon Bagel)
Beacon Bagel: Haven of the Heavenly Boiled and Baked
Name of Store: Beacon Bagel
Kind of Store: Restaurant, Coffee Shop
Owners: Art Burns
Date Opened: 2009
Address: 466 Main St, Beacon, NY 12508
Phone: (845) 440-6958
Who's it for: Anyone and everyone who loves Bagels, and I mean, if you live in NY and don't like bagels I really can't help you. You are now officially the Anti-Christ.
Highlights and Recommendations: The Loaded Lox Bagel which uses locally smoked and nitrate-free lox. The Cubano Bagel Sandwich with grilled grass-fed beef, ham, pickles, and aioli. Hundreds of combinations of made-to-order awesomeness.
Pros: Fantastic, unbromated, high-quality bagels. Free-trade organic coffee. Food delivery. Open 7 days a week. Vegan/vegetarian/gluten-free bagel options.
Cons: None. This place is totally sweet. (It's a little on the small side, but that's about it.)
From the review:
When I first moved to Beacon, it seemed especially cruel and ironic that in an area so close to Manhattan and Brooklyn that we would have such a lack of good bagels. So it is no small surprise that once I found this place I was totally and completely hooked. Addicted. Never again would I go anywhere else for my bagel fix.
Interview
Art Burns is the owner and head baker at Beacon Bagel, Beacon’s own bagel shop and cavernous palace of deliciousness.
Keenan Boyd: Hello, my name is Keenan Boyd and It's a real pleasure to be here today interviewing Art Burns of Beacon Bagel; Beacon’s own Bagel Frontiersman and Bagel Pioneer. Hello!
Art Burns: Hi!
KB: So why did you come to Beacon and start this business?
AB: So my wife and I moved to Beacon about three years before we started the shop. We had heard a lot about Beacon from some mutual friends, and we had some people we knew who were living here, so we came up and saw that it was a beautiful community. We saw how great it was to live here, so we saw an opportunity to live in a really nice community affordably, so we stayed.
KB: And why Bagels if you don’t mind my asking?
AB: Well...We were living here and we could not find a good bagel. No matter how hard we tried. So we opened the store and made them. I mean literally every saturday we would get up and look for bagels; Fishkill, other places, it was killing me so...(Laughs)
KB: (Laughs,) And so were you always going to open up the shop here in Beacon or did you have another area in mind?
AB: Well this business really came about here because we were in Beacon, yes, but at the end of 2008 my wife and I; we were both in the advertising business, and at the end of 08’ the advertising business just tanked big time. We had just had a baby when that happened and we’d both just lost our jobs, so it was like, should I sit on the sidelines for awhile and try to find another job while we have a new baby, or break open the piggy bank and see what we can do? We chose the latter, and that was four years ago, and thank god we did. It was the best decision we ever made.
KB: That’s fantastic, it looks like things are going great here, how’s business doing nowadays? Is everything going well?
AB: It just gets better and better everyday.
KB: Any plans for the future?
AB: You know more of the same, were just gonna keep rocking this, we have a few ideas; in terms of expanding the menu were thinking about some more dining-in kind of stuff, maybe do like a one night a week dining in night. Were also thinking of doing new and specialized deserts for second saturday, staying open a little later for that event. Then it's really always a question of whether to expand or not. It’s always in the back of your mind.
KB: So what can you tell me about the Beacon Bagel itself? What goes into a Beacon Bagel?
AB: Well, we start off with the highest quality ingredients. We use unbleached, unbromated flour, which is key. It’s definitely the highest quality you can get, we use local honey for sweetener, we use brown sugar, we don’t use malt like a lot of people do. I make the bagels personally so I can vouch for their quality and the consistency of the recipe, and then we boil them and bake them in the traditional way, so that’s why their so good.
KB: Cool. How about the produce or the meat that goes into the Bagel Sandwiches, I love your Cubano sandwich by the way, its awesome.
AB: Thank you. We use mostly local meat. We use Murray’s chicken for our chicken salad, we use Murray’s Turkey for our turkey, we use grass fed locally raised beef, the ham and sausage and bacon and stuff is more generic, more run of the mill stuff, but the quality meats that go on a sandwich that we feature, we use the good stuff. We also use local eggs for an additional charge. Our coffee is organic. We’ve always believed in using high quality ingredients. We believe that instead of trying to make a little extra profit margin on every sandwich, give the people something that’s really really awesome so that they’ll keep coming back.
KB: Was it hard to find the companies to bring together that kind of local food network?
AB: It was a little tricky, some were harder to incorporate more than others. It took a little research but it wasn’t too bad.
KB: Does that model translate into being cost effective or does it cost a lot of money to provide that high quality product?
AB: It does cost more, but for example if I used cheap Boar’s Head Turkey for instance, I would make more money on the turkey club but they’re wouldn’t be anything better about coming to Beacon Bagel for a turkey club as opposed to the deli right down the street. So you know I like to think I’m capturing more business knowing how good our food is in comparison. You know what I’m saying?
KB: I couldn’t agree with that more. That’s why I keep coming back. Well thank you for your time Mr. Burns. .
AB: You're welcome!
Review
It might actually be a little unfair for me to review the food at Beacon Bagel.
Like our local baking-buddha Art Burns, I too was especially non-plussed by the other bagel options in my local area. When I first moved to Beacon, it seemed especially cruel and ironic that in an area so close to Manhattan and Brooklyn that we would have such a lack of good bagels. So it is no small surprise that once I found this place I was totally and completely hooked. Addicted. Never again would I go anywhere else for my bagel fix.
I say on average that I eat there little over two to three times a week. I eat there when I’m hungover. I eat there when I feel like getting some coffee in the middle of a long day. I take friends from the city there who complain about the lack of good bagels outside the city. It pleases me to no end when I take these Uber cosmopolitan snobbish bastards out to our own Beacon Bagel and lo and behold their eyes recoil in delight and then in utter horror at the fact that their own bagel place in the city, whatever run of the mill, nameless bagel delis they patronize in the Upper East Side or Brooklyn are not even half as good as this.
I would go as far as to say that these are the best bagels in the Hudson Valley. Period.
As Art mentioned in the above interview the bagels are made with the utmost care, with the highest quality ingredients, using classic methods to produce new textures and flavors of the finest caliber. Since I already mentioned The Cubano sandwich I will try to impart how spectacular and amazing it is. My go-to hangover cure, it is a brick of fatty, greasy goodness that punches my innards into a welcome submission and sucks all the poison out of my guts so effectively that sometimes I even skip the Alka-Seltzer afterwards and order a second sandwich. I would not recommend this to the casual bagel eater, and would say that only individuals as nefarious as myself should ever attempt such actions, however, from time to time it is best to over-indulge, and sometimes denial is the purest form of lunacy.
Beacon Bagel I love you, I love you, I love you. The End.
