Scenes from Paper Mag’s Super Duper Market

Paper Mag hosted an indoor food market at Chelsea Market, Super Duper Market, two weekends ago.  This was their first event (held July 13-15) and the list of vendors featured not only some local treats but also a few West Coast bakeries.  Excited to see if this will become an indoor version of Smorgasburg in Manhattan, I dragged MD along with me on Sunday.

The first vendor to the right when we walked in the door was Mile End Sandwiches debuting their Montreal style bagels.  While I waited in line, MD went to explore and came back with a dense piece of pecan pie from First Prize Pie.  We gobbled down the sticky rich slice, timing it perfectly as the last bite coincided with our turn to order at Mile End.

I remember not loving Montreal style bagels very much when I visited Montreal two years ago but these looked pretty darn fresh. Sliced and toasted quickly to give them a nice crunch, these resembled a softer version of the flatz bagel that I love so much from Murray’s.  To accompany the bagels, the menu featured a few basic smears in addition to a smoked mackerel spread and a salt cod spread with tobiko caviar.

Not a fan of fish for breakfast, MD chose the scallion cream cheese on the freshly toasted sesame bagel.

And I went with the salt cod spread with tobiko caviar.  Of course, I couldn’t wait to take a picture before sinking my teeth into the warm bagel.  The salty spread oozed out a little from the sides which I caught before they fell.  Wouldn’t want to waste any bit of this delicious savory spread!

As we ate the bagels, we took a stroll through the rest of the space.  I was a little disappointed to discover that most of it was more promotional booths than stalls serving up food.  A few samples here and there from the stalls handing out tastings, we ended up with a little bag of crispy cookies from Miette.  About to call it a trip, we found S’mores Bakery, specializing in, you guessed it, S’mores!  There were so many combinations and each was individually toasted when ordered and you can always add on more toppings.

Always on a salted caramel kick, I chose the Salted Sailor.  A puffy marshmallow was sandwiched between two vanilla graham crackers dusted with cinnamon sugar with a smear of salted caramel.  What I loved the most about these was the cookies were more like soft short breads.  Instead of having the marshmallow shooting out from all sides and crumbs falling everywhere, the S’mores stayed together as one sandwich.

And this was MD’s proud creation, the Black and White with peanut butter.  As much as I hate to admit it, I think this edged out the Salted Sailor.

So this might not have turned out to be exactly what I had imagined but nonetheless, I was pretty happy to be able to try the Montreal style bagel from Mile End and to discover that I love them after all.  Of course, there’s always that bag of crispy chocolate chip cookies from Miette to snack on later that day.