Smith Street Bagels- 3 star Yelp review 202 Smith St, Brooklyn, NY 11201 There's nothing that makes me feel worse then giving a highly rated restaurant a subpar review. OK wait a second, that's not true at all. When you're a Jew and have a mother who thrives on guilt trips, you realize that everything you do makes you feel bad. So let's just add this one to the list. I started my day looking around for gluten-free bagel options. Typically you can either buy a package of good gluten-free bagels or you can go to a restaurant and eat their food on whatever crappy package of bagels they buy. We can't win! So this morning, some terrible Yelp reviewer tricked me by saying that this place makes their own fresh gluten-free bagels. I found out very soon that that was not the case. I arrived on a Saturday around 11 AM to a line of about 15 people. The place was packed. I ordered a gluten-free sesame bagel with egg, bacon and cheese. There were a few other bagel options like everything, poppy and plain. The line moved quickly and I was in and out in about 10 minutes. I was very impressed with the quickness at which they had people order and pay. Also, all of the people who work here seem to be in a good mood despite the long line on a weekend morning. I left feeling excited and hopeful. If somebody thought that these bagels were homemade, they had to be good. Right? Not so much. The flavor of the bagel was better than expected, but the consistency was the opposite. Typically gluten-free bagels are similar to the texture of cardboard and when toasted, though slightly better, are severely dry and break very easily. In the case of this bagel, it was so chewy and solid that I could hardly bite through it. Do you know that wonderful feeling you get when you open up a new appliance that's shiny and new but then suddenly and very accidentally stick your finger nail into the piece of Styrofoam that's holding your new present? That noise and that feeling of foamy plastic is the closest thing I can think of to the texture of this bagel. Maybe toasted it would have been better, (which I asked for) but that didn't happen. A sad beginning to what could have been a good breakfast sandwich. Even sadder? The eggs were on the dry side and the bacon.....Maybe we shouldn't even call it bacon. It was turkey bacon. I don't know about you, but turkey bacon is not bacon. Turkey bacon doesn't even come close to bacon. I first I thought this was an error, which would have made me feel better. But after reading some reviews from other people, I realized that they only serve turkey bacon here. But they don't warn us? Don't they realize that every time a person gets turkey bacon instead of bacon an angel loses it's wings? Sorry guys, next time I'm going to keep on walking.