Trying to narrow New York down to a single representative cuisine is a fool’s errand. A Nathan’s hot dog? Pastrami from Katz’s? A bad cup of diner coffee? Let’s pay respects to the city’s strong Jewish population and go with bagels and lox, a weekend staple on many Manhattan tables.

NPR spoke with journalist Heather Smith about her a long piece on bagels and lox, published last year in the late publication Meatpaper. “These mash-ups are what American does best,” she says. “The cronut and ramen burger — those were also invented in New York. But in those cases, you can trace it back to a specific person. In this case, it seems to have just sprung like Venus from the clamshell. The bagel may just be our greatest triumph. That, or the burger.”

A bagel is an iconic New York food. It’s a round bread, with a hole in the middle, savory, crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside. It’s topped with seasonings and traditionally filled with cream cheese and smoked fish. It’s most known as a breakfast item but can be eaten at brunch or lunch time. It’s Eastern European Jewish in origin but has become to New York what the croissant is to Paris, the churro to Madrid or the alfajor to Buenos Aires. These days you can eat a bagel almost everywhere, but New York is the mecca of the bagel (and to not pick a fight, Montreal doesn’t make a bad bagel either).

Lox came from Scandinavia, where fishermen mastered the art of preserving salmon in saltwater brine, Smith writes. Bagels were first glimpsed on the silk route in China, and refined in Italy in the 14th century. It is a mystery, as Smith says, when the salty fish and the funny-shaped roll were first eaten together. But it happened well before 1950, Smith says, because in the ’50s Jewish immigrants would use the phrase “bagels and lox” as an insult to their friends who had become too Americanized.

According to traveller.com.au; smithsonianmag.com; streetwisenewyork.com