Can I find a good Seattle bagel at... Rachel's Bagels & Burritos
Ballard is known for its Scandanavian past and gentrified present. What does all of that have to do with a bagel?
Welcome to It’s A Shanda, one Northeastern Jew’s quest to find a decent bagel in Seattle (and beyond). If you’re interested in taking this journey with me, make sure you subscribe so you never miss a review. If you want to make sure I review any specific bagels (or want to let me know why I’m wrong), you can email me at seanmatthewkeeley@gmail.com.
Even from its very beginning, you could say that the story of Ballard has always been about the inevitability of gentrification and transition.
Initially settled by the Duwamish Tribe, this corner of North Seattle was claimed by a European homesteader in 1853. With the creation of what’s now known as the Ballard Terminal Railroad and a series of lumber mills, the region began to boom at the very tail end of the 19th century. Buoyed by strong lumber and fishing industries, the city of Ballard was incorporated in 1889 and, by 1900, was the seventh-largest city in Washington State. By 1907, it trailed only Seattle in terms of King County population. However, water and sewage programs caused this fiercely independent city to push for annexation into Seattle and, on May 29, 1907, at 3:45 a.m, the City of Ballard officially became the neighborhood of Ballard.
For almost 100 years, Ballard was known for its Scandinavian seafaring community. Tucked away in the corner and removed from most of the major roads that run through the city, it was a hearty alcove of warehouses, fishmongers, and dive bars unto itself.
By the time the 21st century rolled around, real estate developers began to take notice of this sleepy community off to the side. High-density development took hold and, within a few years, Ballard began attracting all the tell-tale signs of gentrification: young professionals moving into new condos, “hip” restaurants popping up all over, craft breweries taking over warehouse space, Starbucks setting up shop on the main street.
Now, what was once a meat-and-potatoes neighborhood full of fishermen and hard drinkers is now the place you go for a lovely Sunday farmer’s market and brunch with your parents when they visit Seattle. Not to say this makes 2022 Ballard “bad,” just that it’s a very different thing than it had naturally become on its own.
Perhaps the same can be said of Rachel’s Bagel & Burritos.
Located at 5451 Leary Ave NW, just around the bend from the neighborhood’s epicenter, RB&B was originally known as Porkchop & Co. Owned by Paul Osher and Raquel Zamora, this longtime brunch and lunch mainstay changed, as so many things did, with the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to their website, when the demand for their usual fare dried up with the orders for Seattleites to stay at home in March 2020, they shifted to “slinging breakfast burritos and bagels just to stay solvent.” Bagels were an easy choice because the husband and wife duo were just about to sign a lease to open a bagel shop. Instead, “we just brought it in-house.”
I moved back to Seattle in August 2020 and my apartment at the time was in Ballard. I remember walking past signs for a place with “pork chops” in the name, seeing they sold bagels, and wondering what the hell was going on. Admittedly I turned to them mostly for the burritos (with two vegetarian options on the menu), but I did get their bagels a couple of times. Ballard was a bit of a bagel desert before that (save for my Mt. Bagel deliveries) and I remember feeling like their bagels filled a hole, so to speak, but I didn’t come away awestruck at the time.
The only inevitable thing about Ballard is change. Whether or not you think that change is good probably depends on how long you’ve lived there. You can guess how longtime residents feel about the influx of pricey restaurants and apodments. But in a neighborhood that used to have an entirely different raison d'être and became something else, can a bagel place that literally did the same thing make that change worthwhile?
Let’s find out.
And if you want to know how I define a good bagel, you can find that here.
WHAT I ORDERED
Untoasted everything bagel with scallion cream cheese.
Untoasted plain bagel as-is.
THE EXPERIENCE
The word is out on Rachel’s Bagels & Burritos. When I arrived mid-morning on Saturday, there was a steady drip of customers waiting in line, scouring the menu, or standing outside waiting for their order. And it’s no wonder given how their bagels show up on all the lists of Seattle’s best bagels, including Eater Seattle, Seattle Met, Seattle PI, Do206, and food writer and chef J. Kenji López-Alt.
That said, as we learned last week with Zylberschtein’s, we can’t exactly take their word for it.
The interiors at Rachel’s are stark and industrial, though it’s unclear how much of that is purposeful and how much of that is because they’re transitioning from their former business model. In spite of the constant influx and movement of customers, the staff was friendly and had my bagels ready in minutes. Something told me they appreciated an order that didn’t require any baking, toasting, or heavy prep.
UPON FIRST GLANCE
As soon as I took the bagels out of their bags, something felt weird. If you’d told me these two bagels from two entirely different bagel shops, I would have believed you.
The plain appeared to be a pretty normal bagel in terms of shape and was extremely uniform in color. That said, it also had that “ring of doom” on it. You know, that ring of…something (cornmeal?) that lines the kinds of bagels you tend to see in supermarkets and bad bagel spots. Not a good sign.
Meanwhile, the everything bagel was much bigger, a little more stretched out, and featured a larger hole in the middle. It was hard to believe these two bagels were related and my only assumption is that they make their plain bagels more uniform to be distributed to other stores.
TOP
Adding to the notion that their plain bagels adhere to a very uniform look and feel for other bakeries or shops, the top was very smooth and uniform, lacking any crustiness or blisters that we’d hope to see. On the bite, there was barely any crunch.
The everything bagel, meanwhile, went hard on the everything seasonings except salt. So given that both Zylberschtein's and Rachel’s don’t include salt in their everything bagel, I have to assume now this is a thing. It’s a bad thing, but it’s clearly a thing. The obvious problem, to me, is that when you take salt out of the situation, it heightens the charred elements and doesn’t give you anything to cut it with. So while the bagel is festooned with copious amounts of poppy seeds, sesame seeds, and onion bits, you ended up getting too much of the burn on the onion. The lack of salt also means the overall flavor of the everything bagel gets tamped down.
If the reason for the lack of salt on everything bagels out here is health-related, I guess I can understand that. But if it’s a conscious choice as part of making a good everything bagel, for the life of me I cannot wrap my head around it.
INSIDE
Another trend I appear to be catching onto out here is that the bagels tend to be on the bready side. There’s bread and then there are bagels. They are different things. They taste different. They chew differently. And eating one shouldn’t remind you of the other.
These bagels have that bready interior that’s best noticed in the aftertaste. You get a slight sourdough vibe, which immediately pulls me out of the bagel experience. The interiors are soft but not as pillowy as I’d hope, though as mentioned in my previous review, that’s a bagel art that is so rare outside of NY/NJ that I don’t expect to find it.
BOTTOM
I honestly don’t have too much memory of the plain’s bottom other than to say that I know I didn’t get the crispiness that I’d hope for when biting into it.
What I liked about the everything bagel was that they seasoned the hell out of it (other than, you know, salt). So it was actually hard to tell the top from the bottom in terms of the everything seasonings, which is enjoyable when you can pull it off. It’s annoying to slice into an everything bagel, spread your cream cheese across both, and then only get the everything seasoning on one half. So I appreciate the effort here.
However, the bottom of the everything bagel also seemed to mirror the top in terms of texture. A definite lack of crispiness was evident and while it was a pleasantly chewy bite, that was certainly missing.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I started this project because I was tired of seeing headlines that equate the bagels in Seattle (and so many other places across the country) with New York or the Northeast, a boast that always seems to be at odds with what I find when I actually eat them. That’s not to say that you can’t be proud of your city’s bagels. But the constant need to compare, or say that yours might even be better, is what always lights a fire under my ass to prove it.
I’m not above admitting that my expectation heading into this project was to be disappointed. That said, I am very willing to set that aside if I bite into a bagel that sends me back to the hole-in-the-wall bagel joints of my youth. Mt. Bagel did that, so I had to assume that it was still possible.
In this case, it was not. And given that Zylberschtein’s and Rachel’s are always included as paragons of the Seattle bagel scene, I’m starting to get the sense that “they are who we thought they were.”
Is It Good Enough For The Goys?
Apparently. As I said, the line was out of the door when I was there on Saturday, and Rachel’s is well-respected in the Seattle restaurant community. They seem to have found a good thing with their bagel and burrito mix, which appears to be a smart diversification. I can imagine that on days when the Ballard Farmers Market is in session, they’re absolutely slammed. It’s the perfect kind of place for the new Ballard.
Is It Good Enough For Northeastern Jews?
I no longer live in Ballard and, as anyone who lives in Seattle can attest, it’s a bit of a schlep to get there if you live near the center of the city. It’s a schlep I’d be more than happy to make for a good bagel every few weeks, but I can’t imagine that happening. Aside from the inconsistency between the bagels, the actual experience didn’t inspire me to add them to my best-of list. And I’m also starting to wonder what’s going on with the people who claim to be bagel experts who do.
What am I missing?
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