Store: Classic Appetizing design aesthetics deployed in a contemporary manner. A clean, white interior with vintage family photos hanging overhead. Very limited drink selection, no bagel display and all spreads and lox in the deli case are pre-packaged to go. Reasonably fast, friendly service. The preparing of food takes place in back somewhere. The Best of The Rolling Stones plays on a speaker. A very well-rendered experience of what an Appetizing 'should' be, which consequentially limits individual store character. 4

Bagel: A medium sized bagel served fresh and warm just after noon. Soft with a very slight crackle on bite. Two-sided topping coverage at moderate density, bottom dominant. Not a ton of salt play but no huge loss in this instance. In the spirit of the Appetizing bagel style - i.e. more structured and ready to act as sandwich bread - but a marked improvement from many other Appetizing spots in the city. 4

Cream Cheese: Served warm from the heat of the bagel. The spread base is excellent, tangy at the right moments and silky smooth. The scallion size and thin ratio relative to the spread leave its involvement an afterthought. Evenly applied across the bagel but way, way, WAY too much spread. This is not the bagel type that can pull this off. The bagel is not big enough to effectively reuse the excess spread and the moderate everything topping amount means there's no loose seasoning in the bakery paper to sop up. I firmly believe bagels should walk the line of uncomfortably messy but if it takes three napkins just to recover from unwrapping it something is amiss. There probably should be a greater deduction in score than represented here but the spread fundamentals are too strong to penalize further. 4