Value for money

Bagels

New York Bagel Co Original Bagels 1.99 for 425g €4.68 per kg

Highs:These are absolutely fine, bready rolls which taste grand when smeared with cream cheese. They are cheap, and should be easy enough to track down.

Lows:Although, why would you bother? While they are fine, they are completely unremarkable and a lot more like a hard bread roll with a hole in the middle than any New York bagel PriceWatch has ever tasted. Of all the bagels tried, this was the only one to break into pieces when cut in two, which could be distinctly irksome of a morning. It was also the most pale and anaemic-looking before toasting, and did not look a lot better afterwards. We were also interested to note that these particular New York bagels come from Rotherham, which robbed them further of any authenticity they may have had.

Verdict:Pale and uninteresting

Star rating: **

H&H Bagels €3.40 for 454g €7.83 per kg

Highs:Having had a starring roll (sorry!) in both Seinfeld and Sex in the City, among other TV programmes, these are proper New York bagels with a bit of a back story. They are shipped over from the US and can be found in the itsabagel shops. They are excellent - heavy and substantial, and a lot less bready than the competition. They come frozen, which adds to their shelf life without making any difference to the taste. They are also comparatively low in salt and not too sweet. Incidentally, the hole in the centre is a lot smaller than in the others, making it much easier to make mayonnaise-heavy sandwiches.

Lows:They may be hard to track down, although they can be ordered directly from the H&H website. And why does the company give the portion size as half a bagel? Who eats half a bagel?

Verdict:Top notch

Star rating: ****

Bretzel Bakery Plain Bagels 0.65 for 100g €6.50 per kg

Highs:The Bretzel Bakery in Dublin's Portobello is something of an institution, and was making bagels when the vast majority of the country had never heard of the things. Now, of course, we are all cosmopolitan and bagels are on every street corner, but the Bretzel bagels were still the only genuinely Irish ones we could find. Freshly baked, they smell absolutely gorgeous and taste pretty good too. They are light and airy and not densely packed, but still retain a proper bagel texture and have a nice springiness to them. At 100g a piece, they are on the heavy side.

Lows:They are pretty scarce; by 3pm on a Saturday, when we first visited, there was one solitary bagel left in the bakery and, while they can be frozen, they really should be eaten quickly.

Verdict:Fresh and flavoursome

Star rating:  ****

Tesco Plain Bagels €1.93 for 425g €4.54 per kg

Highs:These are the cheapest of the bagels reviewed and will be easy to track down. They also taste grand.

Lows:They are on the small side, and while they are perfectly nice they do look and taste a whole lot more like toast than a real bagel. In fact, when toasted and served with jam, these bagels are more like an English muffin with a great big hole in the centre. The hole in question is so massive that making a sandwich with anything other than the traditional cream cheese will prove to be something of a challenge. A single Tesco bagel makes up 20 per cent of your daily salt allowance, which, while broadly comparable with the competition, is still pretty shocking.

Verdict:Grand

Star rating:  ***

Cuisine de France Plain Bagels €2.29 for 340g €6,73 per kg

Highs:These are the only bagels that come in microwave-friendly packaging for really fast heating. It is unclear just why you'd want to heat your bagel in a microwave as opposed to the more traditional toaster, but we gave it a go in the interests of research and were pleasantly surprised it didn't turn the bagels into a soggy mess. It is light and surprisingly sweet, and is probably the most widely available of the bagels tried.

Lows:There is nothing remotely interesting about these, though, and you'd have to wonder what an Irish company called Cuisine de France is doing making bagels. While the company may be Irish, the bagels are actually made in the UK. The price seems a bit on the steep side too.

Verdict:Dear and all over the place

Star rating:  **