2 weeks Ago
L.A. has never really been known as a bagel town.
Sure, you could always pick up a decent dozen from a bagel chain to bring to a brunch, or get a quick egg and cheese bagel sandwich to gobble down as you guzzle your hazelnut roast, but we haven’t historically had a “bagel culture” here in the same way that New York City has. Now, we're in the midst of our own boiled-then-baked-ring-o’savory-dough boom with self-made bagel mavens single-mindedly focused on achieving artisanal excellence. Even New York's local rag is acknowledging California's bagel scene as the reigning champ .
We talked to three bagel shops about L.A.'s bagel renaissance: Belle's Delicatessen & Bar , which has been in the game since 2012, Hank’s Bagels , which blew up in 2019 a few months before the pandemic shutdowns, and newcomer Daniel’s Bagels , whose baker is a recent college grad who opened a shop over the summer.
According to Sam Silverman , New York City’s “Bagel Ambassador” who consults with start-up bagel shops across the world, “in L.A. there tends to be a much bigger emphasis on the presentation and overall experience, than just the food itself.
” Silverman says that in N.Y. bagels are optimized for convenience — closed sandwiches that you can take on the go.
“There is not an expectation for long lines, with equally relaxed atmospheres, and beautiful open-face sandwiches," he says. "The aesthetics are more Instagrammable.” A post shared by Hank’s.
.. a deli of sortsTM️ (@hanksbagels) His theory for why bagels have blown up? The internet.
“It has democratized information,” he said. Bagel making was once limited to the closely held trade secrets of members of New York’s International Bagel Bakers Union Local 338. Now it can be figured out by anyone, “there’s been this explosion of interest everywhere,” he added.
Before he and his wife Kelly opened Hank’s bagels in 2019, Trevor Faris had a background that could be called bagel-adjacent. He’d been baking with sourdough, as a cook in other kitchens. He'd even perfected a focaccia recipe, and briefly worked in the beer industry.
When the opportunity to lease a pinhole-sized restaurant space a block from Bob's Big Boy in Burbank came up, they envisioned a sort of focaccia-forward sandwich shop. But after the first week it was clear that they were destined to become a very popular bagel shop. They'd open their doors at 8 a.
m. and be sold out by 10 a.m.
The people of Burbank really wanted bagels! After the pandemic struck, four months after opening, they had to pivot to deliveries. But orders kept coming in and they needed to find a bigger kitchen. So exactly one year after opening the Burbank location they opened in Sherman Oaks.
Then they built a counter and opened to the public in January 2021, with a Calabasas location in 2023. They now also have a food truck for catering, which pops up at The Platform in Culver City on Fridays and Saturdays. The secret to making a great bagel: Faris has a quick answer.
“TIME," he said emphatically. "You have to be willing to take the time to develop dough." Their fermentation process takes three days.
Day one is the sourdough starter, Day two is the mix, and Day three is proof and boil. He also puts a lot of time into his business. Trevor said he’s “100% in the shop, 7 days a week.
” But when we spoke he was getting ready to take a three-day trip to celebrate his wife’s birthday, their first vacation since opening the shop in 2019. Nick Schreiber co-founded Belle's Bagels with his high school buddy J.D.
Rocchio, as a pop-up in 2012 "before pop-ups were pop-ups". While living together in Highland Park after college, they began to reminisce about their favorite childhood bagel shops: Sam’s on Larchmont, The Bagel Broker, and, of course, I & Joy Bagels. They wondered why nobody was opening these kinds of places that were so dear to them.
Nick had some experience cooking, so he said, “Sure, I can make us bagels,” which evolved into an "Underground Brunch." They invited some friends, but kept the Eventbrite public — and "somehow two or three hundred people showed up in our backyard." A post shared by Belle’s (@bellesbagels) They became obsessed with making their ideal bagel, watching YouTube clips, and going frame by frame to learn about techniques, and factory setups.
They also developed friendships with other new school bakers, and spent a weekend in 2012 at Beauty’s Bagels in Oakland. "We got to hang out with Blake and Amy, the first California bagel revivalists, for a weekend," he remembered. "They were so giving with their knowledge.
" Their first official pop-up was in 2014 in the back of La Perla panaderia in Highland Park. They cooked during off-hours (midnight-5 a.m.
) and would sell out quickly. Their customers said it helped fill the void of bagel shops in the Highland Park area. They initially moved into the York Blvd concert venue, The Hi-Hat, and later moved across the street, first doing take out and then turning it into the Jewish deli of their dreams.
They showcase local purveyors like RC Provisions (who makes everyone's pastrami), with a nod to those Jewish delis they loved eating at in their youth like Art’s, or Nate 'n Al's, or Greenblatts, but with their own fun decor (tchotchkes and family photos) and their distinct sense of humor (the Mezcal Tov cocktail). At the end of the day, he said, it somehow comes back to “Are you doing this for yourself or for other people?" "Does this serve a purpose? Is this contributing to the neighborhood at all?” The secret to making a great bagel: A great bagel must have "textural contrast”, he said, “a good crust, and a little fluff and a little chew.” He loves bagels that "still derive sweetness from barley malt syrup,” which is used in beer making and baking, and is the signature sweetener of a New York-style bagel.
"If you need a frame — it's Grape Nuts. That's what I look for." Schreiber said their style is hard to describe — "it's more of an emotion than anything.
” They took what they liked most about bagels and put it into one. "We're just trying to make the food the grandma would make with a full sleeve of tats and septum piercing," Schreiber said. Daniel Messinger of Daniel's Bagels started dabbling in bagel production while still a student at U.
C. Santa Barbara. When the pandemic lockdown canceled classes in 2020, Messinger moved home to Northridge.
Not being able to leave the house, he spent a lot of time reading online recipes and watching YouTube videos about bagels — adjusting, adapting and perfecting his bagel recipe. He started to bring these bagels to family and friends, and thought, "Well, maybe this could be a business." After graduating college in 2022, he started to bring his products to farmers markets, and worked from a commercial kitchen, and partnered with his brother Ben, who works in marketing, to help grow the company.
For Messinger the ideal bagel is "nice and crispy outside, very soft, fluffy inside. We do smaller bagels — no bagels as big as your head. We're on the rip-and-dip smaller side of things.
" In June, they opened their first brick and mortar in Palms. “The response has been great,” he said. “We've become part of a lot of people's routines.
Walk over, get some bagels." “In the first few weeks we were selling out early, so we had to compensate, just keeping up with the capacity limits and finding a way to add more staff," he added. Now, on their busiest days they make between 1,000 and 1,500 bagels.
The secret to making a great bagel: Messinger said “to make a bagel doesn't require a crazy amount of knowledge. But to make a really good bagel takes a lot of practice and trial and error". At this point he estimates he’s made hundreds of thousands of bagels.
"It doesn't get easier. There are all these changing variables. If X is happening, how do you adjust the variables to compensate?" Recently the weather has been very dry, "so we are trying to keep dough from drying out.
”.
