Bagel sandwiches from Two Men Bagel House in Singapore

This post is a collection of thoughts I had on numerous bagel sandwiches that had been offered by Two Men Bagel House while I was living in Singapore. Disclaimer: This is a delayed post. I ate these bagel sandwiches between March and April of 2020, but I am writing this in June 2021 based on old notes and photos I had kept. I had been sitting on this “material” for a long time because the purist in me was thinking, “the blog is about bagels, not sandwiches”. Then in a recent conversation about everything bagel seasoning with one of my oldest friends, Tanya, I shared some of my notes about these sandwiches with her and we had a good laugh. So I want to dedicate this post to Tanya for encouraging me to write about bagel spin-offs on my blog.

This post is about 9 bagel sandwiches. At the time, I think this comprised every bagel sandwich on the delivery menu of Two Men Bagel House’s Holland Village outlet except for the ones with beef. I will discuss each sandwich individually in the chronological order in which I ate them (according to the dates attached to the meta data of my photos).

Zoidberg

The Zoidberg sandwich offered dill & beet cured lox, alfala, pickled beets and onions, and cream cheese inside a “seeded bagel” with regular and black sesame seeds. The cream cheese was a bit bland. The bread was sweet and had a very subtle sesame flavour. I felt the dill & beet cured lox was kind of original. I had never seen magenta-coloured lox before, so that was kind of fun.

Lean Jean

The Lean Jean sandwich featured turkey sausage, tomatillo relish, scrambled egg white, and avocado served on a cheddar bagel. The tomatillo relish was sweet and flavourful. The combination of avocado and egg white made the overall texture of the sandwich too soft. Although the name of the sandwich was “Lean Jean”, it was rather greasy, so the sandwich kind of fell apart. It was also quite thick, so it was hard to get a bite with everything at once. My last note was about the cheddar bagel and that it was more like a bun and didn’t even have a hole, so I questioned whether it was even actually a bagel.

K Town Gim

The K Town Gim served braised pork and kimchi inside a plain bagel. The pork had a smoky flavour and tender texture. The kimchi had a great spicy flavour. The bagel had a firm crust and a nice dense texture. I know this description is quite short, but the pairing of the flavours from the pork with the tanginess of the kimchi was quite good. I also enjoyed how the pairing worked not only flavour-wise but also texture-wise. Like I had mentioned, the pork was tender but the kimchi offered a nice crunch. I also especially love spicy pickled vegetables, so it might be hard for me to objectively criticize something with kimchi.

Elvis

The Elvis sandwich featured banana, caramelized banana jam, candied bacon, and peanut butter served on a chocolate chip bagel. So I just want to first say that the picture doesn’t do this bagel sandwich justice. (Although to be honest, I’m not particularly proud of my food photography skills on this post overall. Like, why didn’t I at least fully unwrap the sandwiches before taking the photos? I think my impulse to eat my food as soon as it’s ready really overtakes my desire to take nice pictures, and I’m realizing this poses quite a challenge as a food blogger.) The candied bacon was particularly enjoyable, but I really loved everything about this bagel sandwich. The sum was greater than its parts. The marriage of flavours and textures of each of the ingredients worked really together - so well that I really felt like somehow the combination turned out even better than anticipated from the individual parts. This was one of my favourite sandwiches, if not my top favourite, from Two Men Bagel House.

Space Sheep

The Space Sheep offered lamb kofta, arugula, and harissa over a “seeded” bagel with regular and black sesame seeds. This sandwich was spicy and tangy. It also had a minty taste to it, so I think there was some additional dressing with mint in it. Overall, this was a great sandwich and I wish I had eaten it more.

White Rabbit

The White Rabbit sandwich had mushrooms, avocado, and alfalfa on a “seeded” bagel. There might have been another component to it based on the photo, but I’m really not sure because I didn’t really write much in my notes about this sandwich. The only things I jotted down were that it tasted really healthy and it wasn’t particularly flavourful or savoury.

Hangover Helper

The Hangover Helper featured scrambled eggs, bacon, parmesan aioli, and tater tots on a plain bagel. I really enjoyed the tater tots. I thought it offered a fun food microcosm that had its own texture profile going on within the rest of the sandwich. I also thought the tater tots elevated this sandwich from being a typical breakfast sandwich.

White Fairy

The White Fairy is a chocolate chip bagel spread with housemade marscapone and apricot jam. This made a nice, light, and sweet snack.

Chick-a-boom

So I sadly don’t have any notes on the Chick-a-boom bagel sandwich! I actually had to do some digging through my old Deliveroo (equivalent to Uber Eats) receipts in my emails to even find the name of this sandwich because I had this photo but no note with a matching date (Also don’t ask me why I still have these receipts in my email because I don’t know, but I guess my digital hoarding paid off a bit here). I did some Googling to see if I could get more information to jog my memory, but all I could find was that it has marinated chicken from someone’s Burpple (kind of like a Singaporean version of Yelp) post and it doesn’t seem to be on Two Men Bagel House’s menu anymore based on their website. So this is a long explanation just to say I suppose it was an average tasting (and perhaps forgettable) sandwich?

Conclusion

Two Men Bagel House is a solid sandwich place. I would say its main offerings are sandwiches and not bagels per se. Most of these sandwiches are no longer offered by Two Men Bagel House actually (and perhaps none them are on their menu anymore), so I should have been more timely about this post. My top 3 favourite sandwiches were Elvis, Space Sheep, and K Town Gim (but not necessarily in that order). Although maybe the Elvis was my number one choice because reminiscing about it makes me wish I could be eating one right now.