Rats, Flies, Sewage? Health Dept. Closes Bagel Store on Broadway

A popular Upper West Side bagel shop has been shuttered by the NYC Health and Mental Hygiene Department and slapped with a dismal “C” rating, after inspectors discovered a wealth of code violations during a check-up earlier this month.

Tal Bagels, located on Broadway between E. 91st Street and E. 92nd Street, no long belongs to the original chain of Tal Bagels stores that was founded on the Upper East Side in 1988. There are three Tal Bagels locations in that neighborhood, as well as one in Midtown East and one near the Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village complex.

”To clarify: that location is not owned, operated, or affiliated with our company in any way. It was sold by us over 20 years ago and has operated independently ever since,” Tal Bagels founder Ami Halon wrote on Instagram. “We have no involvement in its operations, staffing, or sanitation practices.”

The official Tal Bagels was recently recognized by the New York Times as possessing one of “The 17 Best Bagels in New York Right Now,” with its website boasting that its goods are “made fresh in-store every day in the traditional NY-Style way, boiled and baked with no preservative added.”

Yet if the laundry list of 17 sanitary violations—and one “other” violation—identified by inspectors at 2246 Broadway is any indication, it appears that this standard of freshness wasn’t applied at its Upper West Side knockoff. The department leveled a total of 157 “points” against the store—meaning that conditions were bad enough to exceed the 28 points needed for a “C” grade by a whopping 119 points.

One violation notes that the manager (or supervisor) of Tal Bagels on Broadway lacks a required Food Protection Certificate, which could potentially explain the remainder of the report. One particularly grisly violation simply states that the store’s “food preparation area, food storage area, or other area used by employees or patrons...[is] contaminated by sewage or liquid waste.”

This was perhaps due to another related violation, namely that the bagel shop’s sewage disposal system was either “not provided, improper, inadequate, or unapproved.” Furthermore, inspectors couldn’t find an adequate hand-washing station, with “no soap or acceptable hand-drying device” to boot.

Compounding these sewage problems, the report noted that live mice and roaches had been discovered in either the store’s “food or non-food areas,” as were flies.

Inspectors note that these bugs could have been any variety of FRSA (filth, refuse, sewage, and anthropod) flies, listing the following possibilities: house flies, blow flies, bottle flies, flesh flies, drain flies, Phorid flies and fruit flies. These rodents and flies had reportedly been given “harborage” in the store, a reference to the presence of nooks and crannies that could serve as hiding places for pests.

According to the single “other” violation in the inspector’s report, it appears that not much was being done by Tal Bagels to remediate the critter situation, with a pest management contract “not in place” and no record of extermination practices “on the premises.”

Outside of these health-threatening surroundings, the food at Tal Bagels itself was apparently not kept in a proper state. Cold “temperature control for safety” (TCS) items were reportedly being held in too-hot conditions, while hot TCS items were being held in cold ones; condiments were not in “single-use” dispensers.

Tal Bagels (on Broadway) confirmed that they were still closed as of Friday, July 24, after being reached for comment by The Spirit.