I took a trip to Zabar’s on the upper west side to take a look at their cheese selection.

They have a pretty good selection, a lot of which I have featured on the tastings before. So, this time I thought I would have more fun and taste their cream cheese—which, being made on the main floor in the Zabar’s kitchen across the deli, claims to be the freshest cream cheese you’ve ever eaten:

You’ve never had fresher, richer cream cheese in your life. Your bagels and lox will thank you. So will your tummy. Zabar’s

Cream cheese is a type of fresh cheese; this just means that it is intended to be eaten fresh. In other words, it’s not aged, like Cheddar or Brie. Cream cheese is characteristically sweet, and Zabar’s variety is no exception; it has a very mild taste, and the smell is much less sour than not-so-fresh, large-scale manufactured cream cheese.

As one might expect, and has been time-tested, cream cheese goes well with bagels and bread. In the picture above I have my blueberry bagel smothered with cheese. Coincidentally, there happened to be an H&H Bagels across the street from Zabar’s so I stopped in and picked up one wheat, one blueberry, and one everything bagel. Actually, the original plan was to make my own bagels, as I have in the past, but the weather was just so nice, that I gave in to buying bagels that someone else had made. Of course, people use cream cheese for many different purposes: oftentimes as fillings, spreads, in baking, icings, …crab rangoon, mashed potatoes (according to Wikipedia). I didn’t really whip out the wine for this one; but, if I were going to go full on alcoholic and drink wine with breakfast, I’d probably pick something white and sparkling … mimosa, if you want to get fancy.