When Labana Sukhchan Singh first came to Halifax in January, he didn’t know a soul. But he did know was that there was no one in town making wood-fired Montreal style bagels.
“Every week, all of these bagels are coming from Montreal to here,” he says. “I said, ‘let me take a chance’. So I started to look for where I could open a shop.”
Singh isn’t just a bagel enthusiast, he’s a veteran. He honed his expertise in the bready baked good by putting in 18 years at the St-Viateur Bagel— home of the Montreal bagel. And with that skill set in his back pocket, he confidently promises his bagels are, “hand rolled, boiled with honey water and cooked in a wood-burning over. It’ll be 100 percent Montreal style.”
Singh’s Bagel Montreal Style opened today at 135 Wyse Road, after a summer of preparations, which included the construction of the aroma-inducing wood burning over.
“I have a whole bunch of bagels you can’t get anywhere here,” he says. The list of flavours is sprawling, including the classic sesame, poppy seed and cinnamon, plus options like coconut, strawberry, garlic, Montreal steak spice and pumpernickel.
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This article appears in Jul 27 – Aug 2, 2017.
What a shame Dartmouth seems to be unaware of the horrific air quality problems that are being caused in Montreal by St-Viateur and other wood-burning bagel shops. This is a huge step backwards for public health in Dartmouth. Look up “Montreal bagels and the pollution problem,” an article published in the Montreal Gazette on June 18 of this year.
As a recently-transplanted-in-Halifax Montrealer, those wood smoke complaints in Montreal are 100% the result of the gentrification of the Plateau, Mile End, and now the Mile Ex area. For the last 10-15 years, those neighbourhoods have slowly been filling up with yuppies who want to live in the cool parts of the city, but then immediately start objecting to everything about the neighbourhoods they’ve moved into.
There are no “horrific air quality problems” caused by St-Viateur or Fairmont bagels. All the wood burning restaurants/bakeries in Montreal combined release less than 10% of the particulates and pollution as suburban commuters do when they’re driving into the city everyday. One bagel shop in Dartmouth isn’t even going to make a measurable impact on the pollution produced by Halifax’s lazy, self-indulgent sprawl.