The Borenstein family has been boiling and baking bagels in the Valley since 1979, and the Shea Boulevard location is the northeast Valley’s branch of what became Arizona’s New York deli. It’s big, busy, multigenerational and entirely unpretentious — a homesickness cure for transplants.
The pastrami on rye is stacked to structural limits, and one sandwich feeds two realists. Whatever you eat, leave by way of the bagel case; the whole operation was built on it.
When to go: weekday lunch moves fast. Weekend breakfast is a scrum, and the Sunday bagel line is a tradition, not a malfunction.