My Jewish grandfather grew up in the East End of London, but almost all the places my family once knew are gone.
Create a free account to read this article
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Brick Lane, the intense, chaotic street where Yiddish was once widely spoken, is now the heart of Banglatown, London's faded curry capital.
Brick Lane Beigel Bake is one of the last traditional Jewish businesses in the neighbourhood.
Its doors stay open 24 hours a day, seven days a week and, if you stand in the queue for long enough (which is always a possibility), all of humanity will eventually join you, from orthodox Jews to white Rastafarians, but with an over-representation of clubbers, shift-workers, minicab drivers and people who either can't get home or do not have a home.
Then there are the bakers themselves. The playwright Steven Berkoff wrote, "One might chance to witness at the back of the shop sinewy men with coils of dough, appearing almost to wrestle with them."
The bagels are cheap, filling and perfect. The British bagel is a different breed to its US and Australian cousins - it's chewier, crunchier, shinier and more ruggedly individual, each a unique shape. And, as Berkoff wrote, "The flavour of a warm bagel is sensually delicious beyond all expectation."
One of the finest qualities of the bagel is that it can be an equally marvellous component of breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, supper or all those meals without a name that occur when normal people are sleeping and the streets belong to drifters, lovers and thieves.
My mum likes her bagels with smoked salmon or salt beef, but I take mine with nothing but butter.
The warm, wet aroma of boiled bagels baking always leads me to remember things past, like the disappeared world of my grandfather - a loss that I can taste.
