Then they go back home and eat the bagels and read the paper on their deck.

Gelfand knows she wouldn't have a deck in New York City.

Parker, the coffee house owner, loves the Northwest; she moved here after seeing her friends' vacation pictures of the mountains and the evergreens.

Jodi Flynn is raising her family here. She wore a bicycle helmet and had 8-year-old Sydney and 2-year- old Aidan in tow when she discovered the H&H Bagels.

And McAfee notes, "I wouldn't choose where I'm going to live based on the bagels."

Of course, Don Geddes, owner of Zatz A Better Bagel in West Seattle, said, "I have a cousin in New York who lives a block from H&H, and he says mine are better."

Geddes steams his bagels, which he says takes less work than H&H's traditional method of boiling them. "It's an esoteric debate," he said. "Boiling them apparently seals in the flavor and creates the crust. But I don't think there's a discernible difference."

To others, it can be hard to relate. Andrea Thompson and Nicola Whalen, both Seattleites, ordered their first H&H Bagels last weekend.

Whalen took a bite, chewed and pondered it.

Finally, she said, "Can you guys really tell a difference?"