Heartbroken crowds flocked to the beloved Absolute Bagels shop on the Upper West Side on Friday to mourn its sudden shuttering — which came after the kitchen was taken over by rats.
Kitchen equipment was being furiously carried out of the breakfast joint, which had landed on numerous best-bagel lists throughout its 30-year run.
A lone plain bagel stuffed with red flowers was laid outside the front of the store on Broadway between West 107th and 108th streets alongside a sign that read: “Thank you for your patronage for 30 years but…we have to go.”
“I’m honestly going to go home and cry,” Kathryn Swain, 53, told The Post, noting that she had gotten everything bagel with plain cream cheese and tomato from the shop every day.
“It’s the center of this neighborhood. … Everyone inside — they feel like a family,” Swain said. “They’ve literally adopted me as their family. That’s what makes it special. It’s not a big business. They know everyone who comes in there.”
Absolute Bagels shocked the Manhattan neighborhood Thursday by throwing a “We are closed” sign in its windows without any warning to the public — a spectacle first reported by the West Side Rag.
The shop famously drew crowds every day of loyal visitors, including state Assemblymember-Elect Micah Lasher, who said he tried to reach the owner about keeping the business alive.
But while the front of the bagel shop was constantly buzzing with loyal customers, the kitchen was in a deplorable state, the city said.
The city Department of Health slapped Absolute Bagels with a whopping 67-point violation sheet Wednesday — a severe report card that called for the immediate closure of the shop.
Rat droppings were found in the food preparation, storage and service areas, and sugar packets beneath the bagel counter were clearly gnawed by the pesky critters, inspectors said.
Even worse, the rodent’s dead bodies were left to rot in glue traps on top of the walk-in unit, a representative for the DOH told The Post.
The food itself was also not properly cared for: The smoked salmon, for example, was covered in a nasty layer of condensed wastewater that was dripping from the display case.
“We ordered a closure because we found pest and food contamination conditions posing an imminent public health hazard,” the Health Department said.
The shutdown is not the first that Absolute Bagels has dealt with. It was temporarily closed in 2013 and 2017 for similar conditions. But the most recent DOH report card appears to be the death knell.
Owner Samek Thongkrieng has reportedly not made any effort to begin the reopening process, which would involve another inspection by the DOH, and even told the property broker he wanted to let the space go.
“Samek just told the landlord, ‘I’m done. No more.’ And that’s it, we never got an explanation,” Rafe Evans, who first rented the space to Thongkrieng in 1992, told The Post.
Since the store first opened, Absolute Bagels has been consistently rated as one of the best in the city and was especially famed for serving an assortment of offbeat-flavored bagels and schmears such as walnut cream cheese.
“It was fresh. They toasted it right. There was a good ratio of bagel to cream cheese,” said Xavier, 35, a Harlem resident who grew up in the Upper West Side and had visited Absolute Bagels for 24 years, of the fare.
“Sometimes the bagel is too big and they don’t put enough cream cheese, and sometimes the cream cheese is too much and the bagel is not good enough,” he said of other spots.
Ashna Arora, 27, gasped when she walked by the shuttered shop and said, “No” to herself.
“It’s so sad. They’re iconic. They’re the best in the city. It’s really sad,” she said, adding that her go-to order was an onion bagel with scallion cream cheese.
“It’s the end of an era.”
Similarly, neighbor Christopher Wambu, 70, stopped in his tracks when he say the “closed” signs.
“What is this? Is this a joke? Oh my goodness,” he said.
After the shock wore off, Wambu realized he would have to break the news to his 11-year-old grandson.
“My grandson who lives in DC comes just to buy bagels,” Wambu said. “That’s his favorite thing in New York, to eat bagels. Now I have to tell him they’re closed.”
Workers on Friday told The Post that Thailand-born Thongkrieng was shutting the business down because he is “tired and very old.” The owner did not return The Post’s request for comment.
“He said it’s time to retire,” said Jorge Naba, 55, who had been working at the shop since its inception 33 years ago.
“I feel bad for everybody. Every morning I see everyone. It’s like a family,” Evans said of customers and co-workers. I feel bad. All my life I have been working there.”
And vultures are already setting their eyes on making a profit on the chef’s history.
“There’s a lot of interest,” Evans said of prospective operators. “Other [types of business] are reaching out but [the bagel business] feels it is the right use for the space after 30 years of intense goodwill, so we’re going to rent it to a bagel place.”
But how soon that could be appears up in the air.
“I don’t believe that it’s in pristine condition … I don’t think it’s a turnkey operation,” Evans said.
