Brothers Bagels: Baked Right on Court Street!

Lovers of lox, whitefish salad and sable, start your engines. A new bagelry has opened in Carroll Gardens, offering an array of morning and afternoon delights. 

Brothers Bagels, located at 285 Court Street, is a joint venture run by brothers Alex and Simon Gershovich. Since their doors officially opened on May 21, the brothers have been hand rolling and baking roughly 200 bagels per batch out of the behemoth oven inside the back kitchen. 

"We can do about 1,000 an hour and we make all of them on site," says Alex Gershovich, as he gave Patch a tour. "But it gets really hot in here."

When the 500ºF heat inside the kitchen becomes too much, there's plenty of work to be done on the prep line too.

"Would you like that toasted?" "What kind of spread was that?" "Lettuce and tomato?" "Regular or decaf?" The staff do-si-do behind the register filling requests for lines of customers. People are picky about this stuff.

An array of flavored bagels, flagels, mini-bagels and myriad other bread siblings are piled high inside baskets hung from the back wall. Various spreads and flavored schmears beckon from bowls. A full salad bar flanks the bagel station. Paninis and heroes can be built to order.

And, yet, there's more to come.

"Our baker is working on a few gluten-free recipes too," adds Gershovich. "We should have those soon." At least one red-headed patron seems pleased at that news.

As far as the traditional bagel recipe goes, a recent taste test found the sesame bagels to be pleasantly chewy on the inside, crackly on the outside, and yielding a mild yeasty flavor. While the inner hole could have been larger, the bagel itself did not suffer from excess doughiness: It was solid and well balanced, offering an exemplar vehicle for some tofu-scallion spread (or whatever your particular craving). 

We'll be back soon to try more.