What is New York Bagels ‘N Bialys?
New York Bagels ‘N Bialys is the bagel bakery Scottsdale’s East Coast transplants argue about, and have since 1987. Its flagship is Suite 400b at 10320 N Scottsdale Road, at Cochise Drive a block north of Shea Boulevard, in the strip of the Shea Corridor that has been the city’s Jewish deli row for forty years, with Chompie’s down the road and Kitchen18 across it.
It was founded by Pauline and Martin Rabin, whose recipes came from family shops on Touhy Avenue in Chicago and Jerome Avenue in New York. The method is the old one: dough mixed daily from flour, malt and a little cinnamon, shaped, rested 12 to 24 hours, dropped briefly in a kettle and then baked, which is what gives a real bagel its crust and its dense, chewy middle. In 2005 the Rabins sold to Ruth Leatherman and Shelley Curtis, who took over three days before Yom Kippur and learned the trade from the founders; in 2009 the new owners moved the restaurant to the current room at Scottsdale and Cochise. The bakery now turns out more than 7,000 bagels a day, wholesales them to grocery stores and resorts across the Valley, and runs three more stores, at SkySong, Hayden Peak and Cactus Road in Phoenix.
The restaurant around the bakery is a New York deli breakfast and lunch: lox plates, blintzes, brisket, six styles of Eggs Benedict, the NYBB Pile Up of potato pancakes layered with eggs, meats and cheese, matzoh ball soup, challah, kugel, and a full bar that Phoenix New Times found an unusual addition for a bagel shop. Hours are 6:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. every day.
Who comes: snowbirds from Long Island and Skokie, the Shea medical offices, families after Saturday services, and anyone who has decided that the Valley’s soft, bready bagels will not do. Our verdict: the best boiled bagel in Scottsdale and a decent deli attached to it, with a reputation that has swung from Best of Phoenix to the critics’ bottom tier without the kettle ever changing.
How to eat at New York Bagels ‘N Bialys
Order the bagel, then the bialy. The everything is the benchmark, toasted or not, with cream cheese, lox, whitefish or the Break the Fast spread of kippered salmon and whitefish. Phoenix New Times’ 2012 Best of Phoenix citation singled out the Asiago, garlic and jalapeño bagels as well as the plain. The bialy is the other half of the name and the thing most Arizonans have never had: an onion-filled roll that is baked but never boiled, so it is lighter, flatter, less sweet and has no hole; the shop makes them in chocolate chip, cinnamon-raisin and tomato-basil as well as the classic onion. A half dozen of either is the takeout order.
Then a plate. The NYBB Pile Up is three potato pancakes layered with eggs, ham, bacon, sausage and cheddar and American cheese under cheese sauce; the deli version swaps in corned beef, pastrami, kraut, Swiss and Russian dressing. Eggs Benedict comes six ways, including California with avocado, Southwestern with chorizo and a Reuben with corned beef and sauerkraut. A full breakfast of pancakes or French toast, eggs, home fries and a meat, corned beef hash among the choices, is $15.99. Lunch is cold sandwiches of roast beef, pastrami, salami and turkey, hot ones of brisket, French dip and grilled chicken, tuna and chicken salads, a sirloin salad with blue cheese, and matzoh ball and chicken noodle soups. The bar pours Bloody Marys and mimosas; the fountain does vanilla egg creams, chocolate phosphates and Dr. Brown’s. Leatherman bakes the cookies, macaroons, rugelach and halvah bars.
Timing. The doors open at 6:30 a.m. and close at 3 p.m., every day, with most holidays ending at 2. Weekday mornings before 8 are calm. Weekends from 9 on are a wait for a table and a jam in the lot, which is shared with the rest of the 10320 center and spills onto Cochise. The Scottsdale Progress called the atmosphere “a family vibe,” and Curtis’ line is “we take care of you like you’re friends”; regulars have their tables.
Holidays. This is where the shop earns its place in Jewish Scottsdale: challah in plain, sesame, raisin, poppy and chocolate on Fridays, Break the Fast platters of lox, kippered salmon or whitefish for Yom Kippur, potato and noodle kugel, and Passover specials that New Times lists each spring. Order these ahead through the Toast catering link; they sell out.
What to skip. The chicken-fried steak, the biscuits and gravy and the Denver omelette are on the menu for the Shea medical-office crowd, and they are fine, but you did not come to a bagel bakery for them. Dogs are welcome on the patio and there is a menu for them.
The bagel shop that outlasted the deli wars
New York Bagels ‘N Bialys opened in the year the 1980s delis were consolidating along Shea: Chompie’s had come to Scottsdale from Phoenix, Goldman’s was on its way, and the question in every one of them was whether a bagel in the desert could be boiled. The Rabins’ answer was the kettle, and for 18 years they ran a small shop on it. The 2005 sale was a succession story rather than a business one: Leatherman, of Armenian descent, had run a family-style restaurant in Cape May, New Jersey, with her husband Jon, met Curtis working at another restaurant, and moved to Arizona after Curtis visited Leatherman’s mother here. When Jon died she wanted to stay in restaurants, and the Rabins agreed to teach her bagels. The partners took the keys three days before Yom Kippur, the worst and best week to inherit a Jewish bakery.
The move to 10320 N Scottsdale Road in 2009 made it a restaurant. The new room had a dining area, a patio and a bar, and the press noticed: New Times gave it Best Bagels in the 2012 Best of Phoenix, praising “real-deal New York bagels” that had won over the transplants, and kept it in its Scottsdale Road and Shea dining guide through 2021. Expansion followed in the 2010s: a Tempe store on Apache Boulevard in June 2016, aimed at ASU; a 3,213-square-foot store with a bar announced in April 2017 for Wetta Ventures’ five-million-dollar restaurant row at SkySong, which became the South Scottsdale location at 1455 N Scottsdale Road; a Pinnacle Peak Road store; and a Phoenix store on Cactus Road. Tempe and Pinnacle Peak have since closed, replaced in the lineup by Hayden Peak on north Hayden Road, and the company has not said when or why.
The critics turned in 2019. New Times’ December survey of eleven Valley bagel shops put New York Bagels ‘N Bialys in its lowest tier, unflatteringly, in a year when newer bakeries were boiling bagels too. The Scottsdale Progress, in the same season, called it “a breakfast mainstay” and let Curtis explain the kettle. Both were right: the shop’s bagel had not changed, and the competition had.
What the record does not say is where exactly the Rabins’ 1987 shop stood, beyond “north Scottsdale,” or who certifies the kosher bakery; the shop calls it kosher, the Progress said most of the bagels are, and we found no agency named. We also have no reliable account of the shop’s size or seat count.
Honest assessment: this is a bakery first, and judged as one it is still the best boiled bagel on Scottsdale Road, with a bialy nobody else in the city bothers to make. The deli around it is competent and a little expensive, the service is family and uneven, and the weekend wait is real. If you are choosing between the Shea delis, eat the hot pastrami at Chompie’s and buy your bagels here.