Zohran Mamdani has been in office for less than a year, but the New York mayor has already dealt with a lot. He’s faced catastrophic snowstorms, laid out plans to raise income taxes on New York City’s richest residents, and met with Donald Trump. But journalist Taylor Lorenz thinks there’s one area where the mayor could be doing more: there’s not enough cashew cream cheese in the city’s bagel shops, and it must be rectified immediately.
In a highly unserious X post, Lorenz wrote: “NYC bagel shops need to get with the times. The bagels in LA suck, but all the LA bagel shops at least use cashew-based vegan cream cheese. NYC bagel shops almost never have vegan cc or they’re using hyper-processed Tofutti.” She added: “I hope Zohran can remedy this.”
As it always is in 2026, the backlash was swift. Some X users exclaimed that the “mayor has far more important things to worry about,” while others called her “out of touch and tone-deaf.”
Conservative creator David Harris Jr.—best known for his viral Joe Biden t-shirt airplane video—spotlighted the post to his 3.5 million Facebook fans, saying “the jokes right themselves.”
Lorenz later responded, clarifying that her post wasn’t that deep. “Right-wingers and reactionary weirdos are all QTing this, taking it so seriously and getting angry at the concept of vegan cream cheese. You guys couldn’t survive 5 min inside an Erewhon.”
@sarahmclaughlin/Instagram
Why do New York’s bagel shops offer so much tofu cream cheese?
Tofutti was first developed in Manhattan in the 1980s. At the time, the goal was to create a kosher alternative to dairy-based cream cheese. Under kosher dietary laws, meat and dairy can’t be eaten together.
To give many Jewish New Yorkers a way to enjoy their favorite bagel fillings without compromising their religious values, bagel shops began offering tofu cream cheese. Back then, Tofutti was essentially the only vegan cream cheese option on the market—and in New York bagel shops, at least, it has largely stayed that way.
“In 1981, Tofutti didn’t have competition and invented the dairy-free market,” Gerry Pugliese, Tofutti’s Marketing and Public Relations Manager, told VegNews in 2022.
Today, many New York bagel shops simply list “tofu cream cheese” on their menus, but in most cases, that’s likely Tofutti. Some shops whip it in-house to alter the consistency or add ingredients for different flavors.
It might not be to Lorenz’s taste, but plenty of people argue that tofu cream cheese is exactly what makes New York’s vegan bagels so good. “Liberty Bagels and Thompkins Square Bagels have tofu cream cheese, and they’re fantastic,” one Reddit user wrote in the r/SipsTea subreddit.
Tofutti
Another X user added: “Tofutti is the one true OG vegan cream cheese. Yes to more vegan options, no to this cold-hearted Tofutti slander.”
Want to learn more about vegan options in New York bagel shops? We’ve got you. Check out our guide to the best schmear-worthy bagels in grocery stores and New York bagel shops, as well as our roundup of the best bagel spots in the US, according to Yelp.
And if you prefer cashew cream cheese like Lorenz, we’ve got you covered there, too: try our recipe for vegan lox with homemade cashew cream cheese.
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Charlotte is a VegNews editor and writer based in sunny Southsea on England's southern coast.
