The best bagels in DC are where you might least expect them—piled atop the wooden farm table, Sundays from noon to 4, at the Cleveland Park pizza restaurant 2 Amys. Owner Peter Pastan has been making not only bagels and bialys but also the cream cheese and smoked salmon that come with them. What gives the dough its wonderful tanginess? Instead of water, the sourdough is moistened with whey left over from making the cream cheese; the bagels and onion-stuffed bialys are then baked in the pizza oven. The deadpan Pastan calls the bagel baking an attempt “to alleviate boredom more than anything else.”
This appeared in the August, 2008 issue of The Washingtonian.
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Ann Limpert joined Washingtonian in late 2003. She was previously an editorial assistant at Entertainment Weekly and a cook in New York restaurant kitchens, and she is a graduate of the Institute of Culinary Education. She lives in Petworth.
