Sesame and all dressed bagels from Fairmount and St-Viateur
Montreal ·Montreal is an amazing and magical place for bagels. I’m super excited to write about the rivalry between the most popular Montreal bagel shops, Fairmount and St-Viateur.
Here’s a completely unscientific Twitter poll for people’s opinions about these bagel shops. I also took votes via Facebook and Instagram, which yielded surprisingly similar results. So that’s why I’ve chosen to only show the Twitter poll results.
I have to say I’m really surprised that it’s not closer to 50-50! Both Fairmount and St-Viateur make excellent bagels, which I will describe below. My friend Diane Nakamura and I ate their sesame and everything bagels in a side-by-side bagel showdown.
Sesame bagel
Naturally, Diane and I had to start with the sesame bagels, since sesame is the classic Montreal bagel.
Diane sliced the bagels and she felt that the Fairmount bagel was harder to slice through compared to the St-Viateur bagel. It was actually a bit illuminating to eat the two bagels side by side. The Fairmount bagel was sweeter, while the St-Viateur bagel was chewier and had a much stronger sesame flavour (Diane also agreed with this assessment).
(Day old) All dressed bagel / bagel tout garni / everything bagel
So right off the bat, we can see that there’s quite a big difference in how these two all dressed bagels look. I never realized how densely seasoned the St-Viateur bagel is before seeing the bagels side by side, especially because I always liked the Fairmount everything bagel just a little bit more when I lived in Montreal.
The Fairmount bagel was chewier and fluffier. The Fairmount bagel is seasoned with fennel seeds and these seeds add a lot to the flavour profile. The St-Viateur bagel was much harder to slice through (Diane believes St-Viateur bagels get stale more quickly compared to Fairmount bagels), and was much harder and crispier. The St-Viateur bagel had a great garlic flavour. Both bagels are extremely savoury and seasoned so well that they don’t need any cream cheese or spread. I would totally eat either of these bagels plain.
Conclusion
Between Fairmount and St-Viateur, I don’t think I can ever pick! It really depends on the specific bagel. I think I’m still partial to the everything bagel from Fairmount (the fennel seeds are a super nice touch!). However, St-Viateur has a very pleasant rosemary and sea salt bagel (a flavour that I don’t believe that Fairmount offers), which I will have to review at a later time. Both shops have high quality bagels with distinct flavours, and I think all their bagels are worth eating at least once to see which ones you might like.
Both Fairmount and St-Viateur get 5/5 bagels for me. <3
Thanks to Diane for making my Montreal bagel dreams come true!