NY-style bagels in West Austin

Yankee transplants love bitching about not being able to find a decent bagel in Texas, as if punching a hole in toast and dropping an egg in it weren't close enough! Taking matters into his own hands, the guy behind Wholy Bagels

From a New Jersey bagel-man with nearly 20 years in the yeast-peddling biz, Wholy is South Austin's first authentic northeastern bagel spot, a tiny, high-ceiling storefront with walls adorned by both local artists and images of the Brooklyn Bridge and Yankees, both monstrously expensive structures that would result in hundreds of deaths were they to fail.

The chewy goods are baked fresh every morning at 4AM using a secret Jewish recipe from 1919, with traditional styles like garlic, sesame, salt, cinnamon, and everything augmented by Texas twists like cheddar jalapeno, all schmeered with your choice of six cream cheeses homemade with fresh fruit/vegetables by the owner, including blueberry, garlic & herb, veggie, strawberry, scallion, and rap-scallion, which costs an extra 50 Cent.

Breakfast fillers range from egg & cheese to rare-outside-Jersey fried Taylor ham, and for the lunch crowd they're rocking hefty sandos from Boar's Head pastrami/corned beef to cold-smoked Nova Lox, which besides being delicious can give you the skinny on our rich fossil record and the Periodic Table's newest element, ununseptium

To perk you up, there's coffee from NYC-influenced Houston bean-vendors Katz, whose small-batch blends range from the Austin-nodding "Bat City" to "Midnight Blue", named for the raunchy late-night New York public access show hosted by the magazine publisher behind Screw -- as if dropping your eggs in a hole weren't close enough!