It’s a sad truth: Adorable mini things typically don’t taste nearly as good as their full-size counterparts — as evidenced by Costco products and many a wedding reception hors d’oeuvre.
Sliders never pack the same satisfaction as a single juicy burger and inevitably suffer from too much bun and too little beef. Tiny takes on pizza, from Combos to Bagel Bites, only faintly offer the pleasure of an actual slice of pizza. Cupcakes — whether full- or mini-size — might be adorable to the Carrie Bradshaws of the world, but eating an actual slice of cake with a knife and fork is far more decadent.
And yet, there’s a new entry in the mini food world that shouldn’t work — yet it does. Bantam Bagels are doughnut-hole-size bagel balls filled with flavored cream cheese. They sound gimmicky, but they are delicious and as satisfying as a traditional bagel with a thick schmear of cream cheese — sans the carb coma that follows eating a full-size bagel.
The ratio of dough to cream cheese is perfect, and the bagel portion actually tastes like a genuine, yeasty New York bagel. Flavors like “hot pretzel” (filled with Dijon and sharp Cheddar-flavored cream cheese and topped with a sprinkle of sea salt) or pizza dough (filled with marinara-mozzarella-flavored cream cheese and topped with a pepperoni slice) sound hokey but are actually tasty, thanks to high-quality ingredients like pizza sauce from John’s and cheese from Murray’s.
Bantam Bagels are the innovation of young married couple Nick and Elyse Oleksak. The idea came to Nick, 29, in a dream in May 2012. He can’t remember what the dream was about, but upon waking, he was compelled to write down two ideas: a food truck selling tater tots and bagel balls stuffed with cream cheese.
His wife rolled her eyes at the first idea — but was enthusiastic about the second. “I was like, ‘Awesome, I want it, let’s do it,’ ” recalls Elyse, 28.
So the pair started making the balls themselves in the kitchen of their Park Slope apartment, using a KitchenAid mixer to create the dough and a Crate & Barrel pastry gun to fill the tiny orbs with cream cheese.
Neither of them had much experience with making bagels, but they’re both food lovers.
“We don’t come from baking,” says Elyse, who worked at MorganStanley before quitting her job last summer to focus on Bantam. Baking is, however, in her blood: Both her grandfather and great-grandfather were Jewish bakers in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.
Nick grew up in the kitchen with his Italian grandmother and is the cook of the couple. “I read the food blogs every day,” he says. His Grandma Jojo is now in her 80s, and there’s an Italian-seasoned bagel ball on the menu at Bantam named for her.
“It was a lot of trial and error. Some of the batches of bagels were so bad,” Nick recalls of their early experiments. “We were learning from scratch and kind of making it up as we went.”
“We had rock-hard bagels, we had air puff bagels, we had everything in between,” says Elyse.
They started to get it right after a couple months of baking and experimentation. Nick would bring the balls to his job as a credit broker, and they were met with enthusiasm from co-workers.
“Guys were like, ‘Oh yeah, so I’m going to put in an order tomorrow,’ ” he recalls. “That was kind of like the first real inkling that it was real and that it had some teeth.”
In September, the Oleksaks opened a shop on Bleecker Street, selling the balls ($1.50 each and $13 for a dozen) to West Villagers — Sarah Jessica Parker recently popped in for a few. They’re hesitant to reveal exactly how the product is made but they say the balls are left to rise for two days, boiled and baked like traditional bagels and filled with cream cheese after coming out of the oven.
Earlier in February, the couple started selling them at Union Market in Park Slope. They hope to continue to expand their wholesale business and take Bantam Bagels nationwide.
“Away from New York, there’s a lot of potential,” says Nick. “Airports, train stations … it would work really well in those types of environments.”
Wherever they might expand, Elyse says they’ll always make the dough in the city. No matter the size or shape of the bagel, she says, “You know the secret — it’s the New York water.”
Hot Pretzel
Pretzel bagel topped with sea salt and filled with mustard and sharp Cheddar cream cheese
The Bleecker Street
Pizza dough bagel topped with pepperoni and filled with marinara-mozzarella cream cheese
French Toast
Cinnamon egg bagel, maple syrup and filled with cream cheese
Everybody’s Favorite
Everything bagel filled with vegetable cream cheese
The Hangover
Cheddar cheese and egg bagel topped with Cheddar cheese and filled with bacon-Cheddar cream cheese and maple syrup
Cookies and Milk
Brown-sugar walnut bagel filled with chocolate-chip cream cheese
The Classic
Plain bagel filled with plain cream cheese