Old Salt origins, Washington's BagelFest contestant, & more
Old Salt origins, Washington's BagelFest contestant, & more
Washington State will be repped at BagelFest by a non-Seattle shop
Welcome to It’s A Shanda, one Northeastern Jew’s quest to find a decent bagel in Seattle (and beyond). Along with free bagel reviews every Sunday, we also offer bonus posts (like this one) each week. If you’re already subscribed, I hope you’ll consider upgrading to a paid subscription! Thank you for reading.
In case you missed it, I wrote about how Seattle Has Suddenly Gotten Very Serious About Its Bagels in Eater Seattle last week. I’m biased, but my central thesis was that Seattle officially deserves space in the conversation whenever anyone talks about bagel scenes outside of New York City.
Also, no spoilers, but I’m working on a pretty cool profile piece for Eater Seattle that’ll be out later this year. Stay tuned…
BagelFest takes place at CitiField in Queens, NY on Saturday, Sept. 28 and Washington State will be repped at arguably the biggest bagel competition in the world.
Brittany Erwin’s B’s Bagels & Butters in Gig Harbor is making the cross-country trek for the chance to prove their bagels belong among the best in the business.
Here’s a rundown from the News-Tribune.
Now in its fifth year, the event has risen from a 300-person event in Bushwick to a signature annual gathering for anyone who loves bagels and all those who make them. Thousands are expected to descend upon the festival’s new home at Citi Field in Queens this weekend.
…They must offer three items to the crowd: two bagels and one sandwich, at least 300 of each cut into eighths. They are also tasked with serving a plain bagel — the ultimate, untoasted test — exclusively for the panel of 33 judges.
…“We definitely have a shot,” she said, recalling their prior experience — as attendees — at BagelFest.
….“Being from the East Coast, I’ve been around bagels,” she told The News Tribune in between bagel-making last week. “I have all these people who really haven’t seen it.”
You can follow along for updates and results on B’s Instagram page and the BagelFest page. Good luck to them!
A few weeks back I wrote about how Hey Bagel’s Andrew Rubinstein had sued Ethan Stowell Restaurants over unpaid money related to his Rubinstein Bagels separation agreement.
Last week, Tan Vinh at The Seattle Times reported that the lawsuit had been dismissed after both sides reached an agreement. No further details were available but all’s well that ends well.
“I’m glad it’s behind us,” Stowell told the Times. Rubinstein declined to comment.
Joe Sundberg and Rachel Johnson, two of the owners of Old Salt and Rupee Bar, were guests on this week’s episode of the Stein Club Podcast. They discuss how they got their start in the restaurant business, what it was like to start Manolin (which closed recently), transitioning to bagels during the pandemic, expanding Old Salt into Ballard, and everything that went into creating Rupee, which won a James Beard Award for “Best Restaurant Design.”
“We tried a couple different concepts on to-go stuff, but then our chef Liz Kenyon… came up with a bagel recipe that was crazy,” said Johnson when discussing the origins of Old Salt. “We knew we wanted to do something with smoked fish. We’d been wanting to do smoked fish for a long time. She came up with this bagel recipe that is actually like crazy hard to make and to execute but we’re working on it… We actually like to think of it as smoked fish and bagels because our smoked fish is where we really shine.”
“But nobody else is doing smoked fish,” added Sundberg. “So that’s kind of what’s different about what we’re doing.”
You can listen to the whole interview here.
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