I'll have to try the ESSA bagels, I see they have some good varities of cream cheese as well. I ordered H&H and wasn't that impressed. I wish Goldbelly would carry Brooklyn Bagels, those are my favorite whenever I'm in NYC.

There's a bakery/Deli in Ann Arbor, MI called Zingermans that has great bagels but with Covid a lot of places are closed up there so I haven't been up for making the drive.

I love cream cheeses and still only buy them locally - I only get bagels from Essa.

Assuming you describe the cheese and chocolate bars as the funkier ones, we get them all at WF!

Zingerman's also makes fantastic English muffins! My fav.

ooh. I used to read their column in Gourmet Retailer magazine in the 90s. Hmmmm. Feeling weird temptations :-)

There's a local bakery by my condo that makes amazing English muffins but I'll have to get some at Zingermans next time I'm there.

Zingermans makes amazing chocolate chunk sour dough bread and Graham crackers and in the summer I've made special trips ato a2 just for their sweet cream biscuits. The thing I really miss at Zingermans is their moon pies. I know the moon pies used to sell like crazy and asked an employee why they quit selling them and she said they got in some legal trouble with the company that sells the actual moon pie brand. Not sure why they just couldn't change the name and sell them, these are nothing like those moon pies they sell at 7-11, especially if they just sold flavors like the mint and PB that moon pie doesn't even make.

Heck, everything Zingermans sells is amazing. I'm surprised they don't partner with goldbelly to sell things like their pot pies and baked goods.

Zingermans sells a business instruction policy (Z Train) to aspiring bakery businesses, and Im sure they have a chapter about doing your own mail order instead of using a high-commission platform. Their monthly column in Gourmet Retailer surely was their magalog for the course :-)

Zingerman's mail order is actually reasonable anyway (I bought Babka from them for a gift recently since I wasn't able to make it to a2 the day before). I have their cookbook but too much work involved in the stuff I like LOL.

They have a great business model. I live in Toledo and during Covid they were doing a Reuben roadstop tour and went to a bunch of nearby cities on different saturday's and did it at least twice and you could orders a lot of their sandwich's and stuff from their store and pull into a parking lot and pop your trunk and they would put it in there.

They have a program my church used for visioning. A zingerman's employee came down a few times and helped us out with our ten-year visioning plan and figure out what things were the most important and how to implement them.

I'm really surprised they opened up a deli in downtown Vegas. Doesn't seem like something they would do since they've always kept the deli to one location.

We had the Momofuku Bo Ssäm for dinner tonight. Really easy to cook and came out great - it was exceptionally tender and broke apart with almost no effort. Very flavorful and the included sauces complemented the meal well. The kids didn’t care for the kimchi, but I’d think that was the be expected.

Used my 3rd Amex offer to send a way overdue holiday gift -- T-Rex Cookies. I knew the recipient liked Levain cookies from NYC - but they were not on goldbelly. But found this list of the 15 best cookies in America and saw T-Rex at #1 above Levain at #2 - so decided to try. They arrived today and when they say "big" cookies they are not lying -- these things were the size of my friend's face! Report back is they were tasty too.

I ordered two dozen of the Weikel's Bakery Kolaches because they looked to be similar to a dessert I fondly remember from my youth, especially the cream cheese variety. And they were! What a walk down memory lane...

The taste and texture are close to a sweet dinner roll with very sour cream cheese baked into it. Sort of like a cheese danish but a little less moist and a little more sour. Really, really enjoyable.

The other flavors weren't nearly as good. So far I've tried chocolate cream (somewhat flavorless) and apple (very sweet, tastes like canned apple, but still pretty good)... but the cream cheese ones were delicious and freeze well.

Today we had shrimp and pork dumplings as well as scallion pancakes from Shirley Chung’s Ms. Chi. Was a bit turned off that it arrived in takeout containers. The food was good but an absolute rip-off. Would not recommend.

On a side note, I posted it to one of my local FB food/whiskey groups and a friend invited me for a homemade version, which I’m totally looking forward to.


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I ordered some Picasso's Pizza from Buffalo, NY to watch my Bills in the AFC Championship game. It was pretty reminiscent of back home pizza. Cooked really simply and easily in oven. Pricey but worth it to get a taste of buffalo style pizza.
Edit: Made my own wings in a deep fryer, I've had frozen wings from buffalo before and they just miss the mark in general.

Shortcake society had shortcake made with Bailey's for St. Patrick's day. Amazing

I loved those things- Zingerman's called them "Cosmic Cakes". They occasionally do a special bake, but they won't ship them (I tried). I was told that they're too labor intensive to make on a regular basis, but wow they were SO GOOD.

Goldbelly has a promo now for $20 off if you fill out their March Madness food bracket. I am tempted to order Buddy's pizza but they take up too much freezer space plus I don't need those calorie bombs.