The Hey Bageling is upon us

Andrew Rubinstein's long-awaited bagel shop finally opens in University Village

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Let’s not bury the lede. In case you weren’t aware, Hey Bagel opened in University Village earlier this week. If you haven’t already stood in line to snag a bag of hot and fresh bagels and sample some schmears, get to it.

I’ve spent the week working on a piece about Hey Bagel and owner Andrew Rubinstein for Eater Seattle that should be out next week. I had the opportunity to shadow Andrew through the whole process from pop-up to opening day and it was an incredibly fun experience, even if Andrew didn’t always seem to be having fun dealing with the delays and daily dramas.

While we’re waiting for that piece to come out (I’ll share it when it does), I have a few tidbits to whet your appetite.

Hey Bagel is doing things a little differently to most other Seattle bagel spots. If you’ve ever been to PopUp Bagels back East, you’re familiar with the “tear and share” or “grip and rip” method of bagel sales. It means that instead of getting a bagel schmeared with cream cheese, you buy your bagels and a tub of cream cheese separately (not unlike Mt. Bagel). Rubinstein’s hopeful that people will be cool with the system, though he told me “I don't think Seattle is going to be psyched about being told what to do.” Still, everyone I asked about it on opening day seemed very happy with the setup.

Some might say the boldest move Hey Bagel is making is that they do not have a toaster. That’s because Rubinstein plans on having hot and fresh bagels at all times of the day, thereby not necessitating the need to toast. I’m a big fan and would consider it a true shanda to toast one of these bagels anyway. But we’ll see if the U Village crowd is cool with those conditions.

Those who used to get bagels at the pop-ups will see some familiar flavor profiles. Bagel flavors include plain, everything, sesame, poppy, and salt with a few rotating options like blueberry or a cheddar pickled jalapeño bialy (which was there Thursday).

On the schmear side, flavors include plain, scallion, spicy scallion, chili crisp, biscoff/chocolate/espresso bean, whole lox, and raspberry/curry/hot honey. Vegan plain, vegan scallion, and elote weren’t there on opening day but were expected soon.

I arrived at the shop around 7:20 a.m. on Monday so that I could be there for the grand opening at 8:00 a.m. While I was waiting, a line started to form outside Hey Bagel, led by a trio of people I overheard saying they’d driven 45 minutes to be there. My phone pinged and, as I stood there looking at the people in line, I glanced down at a photo from those very people, showing me they were there. Turns out, one of them was

Tom Pendergast

, who has the great Substack,

Out Over My Skis

. Tom was kind enough to let me interview him and his friends and then I watched as he placed the first order in Hey Bagel store history, a salt bagel with spicy scallion.

One of the more interesting things I learned about Andrew is his history as an artist and painter. Understandably, the bagel business doesn’t allow for much time or mental energy for painting, but I saw parallels between his approach to art and the way he thinks about bagels.

Much of that will be in the Eater Seattle piece but I wanted to include one anecdote that I really loved.

While working as an artist, he got the opportunity to participate in “Cows on Parade,” an art installation that featured over 300 life-size fiberglass cows decorated by local artists and placed all over the city. At the end of the exhibition, Andrew still had his cow, which was covered in mosaic tiles, and was trying to find a buyer. While watching an NFL game on TV, he heard legendary announcer John Madden say he’d bought some of the cows and was very excited about them.

Andrew Rubinstein’s Cow on Parade. Source: Nan Johnson/Pinterest

A starving artist at the time, Andrew saw an opportunity. He took some photos of the cow and wrote a letter to Madden. The announcer’s infamous Madden Cruiser happened to be in town a few weeks later for a Bears game and Andrew, pretending to be a courier, walked onto the bus and left the package. Two days later, Madden’s agent called him and said he wanted to buy the cow. And so he did.

I tried to track down the cow to see if Madden, who passed away in 2021, still had it years later. The closest I could come was a 2004 post from the Pleasanton Weekly, which profiles Madden and his wife Virginia, noting that “on the terrace is a mosaic cow that John brought back from Chicago.”

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