Just a couple days after RAVING about Holmdel Bagels, here is a major gripe about D’Allessio’s Bagel Express in Atlantic Highlands. Went today en route to Sandy Hook. Didn’t feel like making the detour to Atlantic Bagels on First Avenue. I had never been to D’Allessio’s, but they have been there for a long time. What could possibly go wrong?
First of all, the place is dirty and grimy. The kind of unclean you don’t get from age, but the simple ignorance of cleaning. The coffee pots were stained and filthy. The filters on them look like they had not been changed since the 1980’s. The floors were sticky. The kitchen was unkempt. The place is MASSIVE inside. Makes me wonder if it was a pizzeria at one point.
I ordered a toasted everything with butter. Justin had a cinnamon raisin with walnut cream cheese. Both were $3. Absolutely asinine to charge $3 for a buttered bagel. Everyone else charges $2 (1 for the bagel, 1 for the butter) or less.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the man helping us behind the counter look like he landed from a trip from Bizzaro Land. His shirt was disgustingly stained and sweaty. I know kitchens are hot, but this was a gross abnormality. He looked like he took a bath. He was buzzing all over the place, speaking almost incoherently despite us being the only customers aside from an obese bald man reading a newspaper at the counter who did not move or speak the entire time and who wasn’t eating anything. The worker’s pupils were dilated. He screamed instead of speaking. (I’m trying to say something here without saying something if you catch my drift). I picked up a newspaper to kill the eternity we were waiting for these overpriced bagels and he went into a Burt Reynolds rant finishing with, “You two are so young, you probably don’t even know who that is.” I stood in a stunned silence.
We noticed a platter of fresh made chicken cutlets on the counter and asked to buy one to try it. He gave us one for free. I guess the price was listening to him scream about how Cannonball Run was the best movie ever made and how the government is spying on us through EZ Pass (he veered off course from Burt Reynolds).
I can’t even give a rating. I don’t even know if I am putting this on my blog. It felt like a dream.
Bagels sucked, by the way.
