Yeastie Boys, Bagel Love & What Makes a Good Bagel with Evan Fox

On this episode of Taste Buds with Deb, host Debra Eckerling speaks with Evan Fox, founder and owner of Yeastie Boys Bagels. With eight locations around Los Angeles, the vibrant food truck is full of delicious New-York style LA bagels. Their creative combinations have fun names - mainly pop culture and music references - to go with them.    When Fox started Yeastie Boys Bagels in 2014, there were not a lot of bagel options in Los Angeles.  What started as a side project with a friend - experimenting with bagels in an LA apartment, and delivering them to tastemakers, mostly in the music scene, and posting funny bagel memes on Instagram – is now a thriving LA business.   “It’s been pretty wild; I’m grateful and blessed to be here,” he says. “My whole thing for Yeastie Boys is, ‘How can I make something that people want to eat daily, that's a quick bagel, that's a classic that you'd get in a bodega in New York. … How can I take the old classics and make them more refined [and] more current?’”   Yeastie Boys is known for the New York style bagel. Fox’s top three favorite bagels are sesame, egg and an egg everything bagel.    “New York style bagels are very plump, they have got a nice chew, they have a nice sweetness to it, usually from barley malt,” he explains. “They have a nice crust when you bite into it, but it's soft and chewy in the middle.”   Evan Fox shares the Yeastie Boys origin story, along with his personal bagel journey: from developing a love of bagels at a young age - it was his go-to after school snack in Arizona - to discovering NY bagels, when was a touring musician. Fox also talks about what makes a good bagel, playing with pop culture - they recently created a custom menu for a partnership with Netflix’s “Nobody Wants This,” the bagel’s place in the mainstream, and more.      Check out YeastieBoysBagels.com and follow @YeastieBoysBagels on Instagram.   For more from Taste Buds, subscribe on iTunes and YouTube, follow @TheDEBMethod on social media, and go to JewishJournal.com/podcasts.