Murray's Bagels Bagel Bakery in the Village: $2.30 a Bagel

Murray's Bagels has been rolling bagels by hand on Sixth Avenue, a few steps from 13th Street, since November 1996. It sits right where Greenwich Village meets Chelsea. Nobody comes here for a trendy flavor or a sourdough experiment. The draw is a dense, glossy, properly chewy New York bagel, baked on the premises and sold over a long deli counter. Behind the glass sit more than half a dozen smoked salmons, homemade whitefish salad and a wall of cream cheeses. A plain bagel costs $2.30 on the shop's own ordering menu, which makes it one of the more honest breakfasts on lower Sixth Avenue.

The shop's story starts with Adam Pomerantz, who was a vice president at Merrill Lynch when he decided to leave Wall Street for a bakery. His father, Murray, owned a women's clothing store on Rivington Street on the Lower East Side. Every Thursday he brought home appetizing from the neighborhood: bagels, lox, sable, whitefish and cream cheese. Adam later apprenticed at a traditional wholesale bagel bakery in New Jersey, working the overnight shift to learn each step. He tested recipes across Manhattan and Brooklyn before renovating a small Village storefront on a shoestring budget and naming it for his dad. The original room has since expanded, but the counter still runs on the same idea: hand-rolled, kettle-boiled, baked fresh.

Start with the bagel itself, before you commit to a sandwich. The everyday lineup covers plain, sesame, poppy seed, onion, garlic, salt, everything, pumpernickel, cinnamon raisin, whole wheat and multi-grain, plus a bialy, a health grain and a whole wheat everything. A single bagel is $2.30 and a baker's dozen is $27.60 on the current ordering menu, a fair way to bring thirteen home for the freezer. Regulars tend to split the order: one bagel eaten warm and plain on the sidewalk, another taken back to the office with a quarter pound of scallion cream cheese at $5.00. The salt and the pumpernickel are the two that hold up best after a few hours in a paper bag.

The fish case is what separates Murray's from a corner deli that happens to sell bagels. The salmon list runs from Eastern Nova Scotia and belly lox to gravlax, Scottish, Norwegian, Irish, wild sockeye and wild Pacific king, along with sable, lake sturgeon, smoked trout and a pastrami-cured salmon. By the quarter pound, Eastern Nova is $14.50 and sable is $16.50, so a small spread for two at home is easy to assemble. Homemade salads fill the next tray over: whitefish salad at $8.25 a quarter pound, tuna, egg, baked salmon, herring and chopped chicken liver. Ask for the fish hand-sliced thin when you buy it loose, and keep the onions and capers separate if the bag has a long ride ahead.

Several of the house sandwiches read like a family tree. The Rivington Street pairs Nova Scotia salmon and sable with plain cream cheese, tomato and onion for $21.75, and it shares its name with the street where Murray kept his shop. Roz's Reuben is $16.50, and Adam's Choice stacks a breaded chicken cutlet with Black Forest ham and Swiss for $16.50. For breakfast, The Bubeleh puts two eggs, Nova and a crispy potato latke on a bagel for $18.95, while The Oy Vey! swaps in bacon, sausage and cheddar at $16.95. The Traditional, Nova with plain cream cheese, tomato, Bermuda onion and capers, costs $16.95 and is the cleanest test of the fish and the bread together.

The queue here moves quickly because the staff work the counter in a practiced rhythm, slicing and spreading while the next person orders. The heaviest stretch comes during the commuter push before office start, and again late on weekend mornings when the Village brunch crowd wakes up. Arriving right at the weekend opening, or mid-afternoon on a weekday, usually means a short wait and a better pick of the bins. Know your bagel and your spread before you reach the register, because indecision is the one thing this line punishes. Larger orders, including the baker's dozen and catering platters, are easier to place ahead through the online menu.

A few house habits are worth knowing. Murray's makes four soups each day, and the menu asks you to call the shop for the daily list rather than printing it. The classic salads, including the Cobb and the Waldorf, are not available on weekends, so plan a salad lunch for a weekday. Plant-based eaters get real options: a plant-based cream cheese sandwich is $6.25, and there are tofu spreads with spinach and dill. At the pastry shelf, Gertel's black and white cookies are $3.25, rugelach in chocolate, raspberry or apricot cost $1.50 each, and potato or spinach knishes are $4.95. Coffee is brewed from Counter Culture beans, and teas come from Harney & Sons.

Murray's makes a natural first stop for a slow loop through the West Village. Walk south on Sixth Avenue to the red-brick Victorian Gothic tower of the Jefferson Market Library, then turn west along Greenwich Avenue toward the small triangle of Abingdon Square. From there, Bleecker Street leads past cheese shops, bakeries and record stores toward Christopher Park. If you prefer greenery, head east along 13th Street and down Fifth Avenue to the arch at Washington Square Park, where the benches around the fountain are a good place to finish a bagel. Union Square and its Greenmarket are about a ten-minute walk northeast, which pairs well with a Saturday visit.

Murray's Bagels is at 500 Sixth Avenue, New York, NY 10011, the stretch of Avenue of the Americas that the shop's ordering page describes as Thirteenth and Sixth. The current online store schedule lists 7:00 am to 3:30 pm daily. The F and M trains stop at the 14th Street station on Sixth Avenue, and the L stops at Sixth Avenue, both within two blocks. The 1, 2 and 3 trains at the 14th Street station on Seventh Avenue are a short walk west. Murray's also ships bagels nationwide through Goldbelly, and it runs catering platters for groups.