Kiva's Bagels

Bakery: Kiva's Bagel Market and Bakery
Address: 2496 Yonge St, Toronto ON
Website: http://www.kivasbagels.ca/
Style: Jewish
Price: $$ 

This third location of Kiva's Bagels, a block or so north of Yonge & Eglinton is a bit hard to find online (there's practically no sign of it, even on their website), but it's indeed there, a fairly new bakery with a couple of shelves of imported and local deli goods. There's not that much in terms of selection, with one panel of shelves filled with a variety of bagels and the another with a few varieties of baked goods, namely chocolate buns, sweet cheese buns, typically North American muffins and pies, and some rugullah. Coming there on a Sunday afternoon, we were greeted with the news that they were closing earlier and everything was buy one, get one free. Very, very nice. :) And what did that mean? Four baked goods for $5, tax included. Even better!! That made the trip definitely worthwhile! Who can resist such a deal on baked goods? ^-^

Nonetheless, I pretty much nabbed every variety of baked good there was available for the taking: first up was the chocolate bun (*not* a buffalo, as my brother pointed out multiple times), a cinnamon-style chocolate bun with crumble on top. It was a tad bit dry and all agreed that it didn't beat a buffalo, but it was still good.

Similar to the chocolate bun, there was also the cinnamon bun (all, by the way, are regularly priced at $2.50/each), using the same dough, I believe, but with cinnamon filling instead. I also found it a little too hard on the outside and would have liked a little more moistness with the cinnamon, but I liked it. Cinnamon buns seldom amaze me, but these were up there as great examples of one. These guys could have made a great poppy seed bun with this same concept (yes, I'm always a little saddened when the only thing with poppy seeds are the bagels... >.>)

On a different note, there was also the sweet cheese bun with both cheese and jam on the inside. Not being a fan of sweet cheese anything myself, I handed this off for the brothers to sample. One really liked it, saying it was better than the chocolate bun. He liked the soft dough and enjoyed the sweet cheese filling, saying it was better than usual buns of this kind. The other... somewhat agreed, at least with it being better than the chocolate bun. I guess no one agrees on anything here. :P

Nevertheless, about a block away from the What-a-Bagel, which has been around forever, Kiva's definitely has the edge with more small-scale (the bagels don't come through the machine, after all) production, interesting selection and just, put simply, tasty baked goods.

Rating: **1/2