Becky’s Bites elevates cream cheese from mere accessory to the NY bagel to the star of its own show. The tiny boutique on 7th Street utilizes cream cheese as the base ingredient in each of its desserts and spreads, spotlighting the topping’s versatility. With such diversity in its offerings, Becky’s is redefining cream cheese.
Becky Rosenthal, the shop's creator, spends “a lot of long nights” tinkering with chemistry to develop new flavors, dissecting her favorite desserts and discerning what elements she can apply to cream cheese recipes. Becky used to work as a personal chef, but could not stay her passion for this idea until it turned into a reality.
Becky begins every dessert recipe with the sweet “#basic” cream cheese flavor. The tiny items on the menu include a chocolate-cappuccino bite, a cookie-sandwich, an apple-pie bite, and more. At the opening event for her brand new shop during the summer of 2017, Becky told the Manhattan Sideways team that she plans to tweak the menu with the seasons, promising pumpkin flavors and Halloween themed items in the fall. The shop also offers dips such as “S’mores and Chill,” which comes with a small cup of graham crackers to dip into her s’mores flavored concoction. “Beckaroos,” Rosenthal’s spin on the children’s treat “Dunkaroos,” comes with teddy graham crackers and cream cheese funfetti dip, and is just one item on the “Childhood Throwbacks” portion of the menu.
Cream cheese provides “a palette for every flavor,” states Richard Rosenthal, Becky’s business partner and husband. “It’s such a simple idea - it could be breakfast, it could be lunch,” he continued while pointing to the selection of spreads at the front of the counter. The cream cheeses he indicated are best for bagels and other bread vehicles, and include the daring “Bacon, Egg & Cream Cheese” option. All the cream cheese is sourced from the Hudson Valley, and the bagels and breads arrive fresh every morning from a local baker.