Where is Seattle getting its bagel fix?
Where is Seattle getting its bagel fix?
Dan Savage, Tammy Morales, and other Seattleites chime in.
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.
Each week I offered up my overly extensive thoughts about a Seattle-area bagel, choked full of personal preferences and nostalgic remembrances. You know what I think the best bagel places in town are and you know what kind of bagel order makes me happy.
But what do other Seattleites think is the best Seattle bagel spot? And what are they getting once they’re there?
I decided to find out.
I reached out to a slew of notable Seattleites. What makes one “notable?” That’s tough to say. Some of the people I reached out to are legitimately famous in their own right. Others, I would consider tastemakers and leading voices around town. Others still have cornered the market on their particular PNW niche (something I can personally appreciate).
“But Sean,” I can hear you asking, “Why didn’t you reach out to me? Aren’t I notable?”
Of course you are. We’re all notable in our own ways. You’re doing a great job. But I had to make a judgment call about where to draw the notability line this time. Keep grinding, give 110%, and maybe next time you’ll make it over to the other side.
Anyway, I asked all of the notable Seattleites two simple questions:
What is your favorite or go-to bagel place in or around Seattle?
What is your go-to bagel order?
I got responses from a varied collection of the Emerald City’s finest. The only thing more varied than their backgrounds was their answers to those two questions.
Once I had all of the answers, I had to ask myself: What does it all mean? What do they tell us about Seattle’s insatiable desire for traditionally Jewish baked goods? What do they say about who we are as a society and, to a larger extent, living creatures in a vast and unknowable universe?
I don’t know, man. But it was still fun to see what everyone said.
Without further ado, I give you their answers (paid subscribers get to see them all)…
Tammy Morales, Seattle City Councilmember
For a brief moment, my neighborhood reveled in Muriel’s, a tiny spot inside Third Place Books. Sadly, Muriel’s didn’t survive COVID. When we need a fresh bagel, we head to the recently opened Loxsmith in Beacon Hill.
Go-to bagel order: If I lived on the East Coast my regular order would be a sesame bagel with smoked whitefish salad. Loxsmith is the only place near me where I can order that. If whitefish isn’t available, I get an everything with plain cream cheese.”
Hannah Krieg, staff writer at The Stranger
My favorite bagel place in Seattle is Eltana, but it’s mostly just a sentimental thing. When the owner, Stephen Brown, ran for City Council, he emailed my former Stranger employees to put in a good word for him during our endorsement process last year. He reminded them that he gave them gift cards in 2020 at the onset of the pandemic. One could see it as sneaky, but I thought it was really funny. He also brought rainbow bagels to our office and they were fab.
Go-to bagel order: I went through a phase in college where basically every day I would toast a blueberry bagel and top it with thick slices of fresh mozzarella, honey, and sea salt, which would be fancy now, but was the pinnacle of luxury at 21. Now I usually just do an everything bagel and plain cream cheese.
John Keister, comedian, writer, and host of Almost Live!
My favorite bagel place is Dingfelder’s on Capitol Hill.
Go-to bagel order: I like salt bagels with either the lox schmear or the olive schmear.
Lex Vaughn, founder and editor of The Needling
My favorite bagels so far in Seattle are the poppy bagels at Rachel’s. They come encased in this really crisp black shell of poppy seeds that’s delicious and unique. It’s so good on its own, I often don’t even want to ruin it by adding anything to it.
My go-to bagel order is basic: cream cheese, lox, red onion, tomatoes, and capers on a toasted everything bagel.
Julia Quinn, New York Times best-selling author of the Bridgerton series
I just... can't. I mean, I eat bagels here, but it'll never be the same. Like you, I'm a Northeastern Jew, and I have visceral bagel memories the Northwest can't touch. For me, bagels will always be my great Aunt Millie's house in Levittown, NY (she was an original Levittowner) with Temp Tee whipped cream cheese. (ALWAYS Temp Tee. The pink tub. IYKYK.) I'm not sure where she got the bagels, but she grew up in Brooklyn, and there's no way a goyish bagel would cross her threshold.
Go-to bagel order: Plain or egg bagel with plain cream cheese (Temp Tee, if I can get it!), lox, and sliced tomato.
Dan Savage, Savage Love host, The Stranger editorial director
My favorite place to go for bagels is across the street. My neighbor John Colwell makes the best bagels I’ve ever had — in Seattle or anywhere else. I’ve traveled a lot, spent tons of time in New York, and I’ve eaten lots of bagels. John’s are the best I’ve ever had. He’ll send a few over when he makes a batch and they arrive warm and they are so, so, so good. Four stars. Highly recommend moving onto the block where John lives — and not just for the bagels.
Go-to bagel order: Everything bagel, sliced, toasted (unless they’re still warm and fresh from John’s oven), with a thick slab of plain cream cheese. Nothing fancy!
(Ed. note - I had to laugh when I read Dan’s answer. I know John! He’s a newsletter reader and invited me over to his house to eat his bagels. They are indeed excellent. If he ever does one of his rare pop-ups, I’ll be sure to mention it.)
Cathy Moore, Seattle City Councilmember
Sesame with scallion schmear at Zylberschtein’s!
Erica Barnett, author, journalist, and co-owner of PubliCola
My favorite bagel place is Zylberschtein's, both for their plain and everything bagels and the bit of attitude they always seem to give you. Is it really a New York-style bagel without the rush of mild panic when you order? My go-to, though, is Rubenstein, because I'm on Capitol Hill a lot and it's super convenient; also, their sandwiches are great (I'm no purist—I love a big bagel sandwich.)
Go-to bagel order: Everything bagel, toasted, light (thin layer) plain cream cheese, lox, red onions, capers. Tomatoes ruin bagels.
Melissa Santos, Seattle reporter for Axios
I get the smoked cod sandwich at Old Salt when I want a bagel with fish on it. The roe and pickled cucumbers keep me coming back, and Old Salt's consistency with its bagel texture has impressed me over many months.
At every new bagel place I go, I usually try a plain bagel with plain cream cheese, untoasted, sort of as a test of the bagel texture. If the bagel's got some crispness outside and softness inside, I like to rip pieces off and dip them directly in the cream cheese. One of my favorite places to do this is Little Market on Portage Bay.
I haven't been to Bagel Oasis in a while but I also have found their plain bagels and cream cheese to be something I crave. Boring, I know, but the texture with the outer crunch makes the bagel for me more than the flavorings.
Harry Cheadle, editor of Eater Seattle
The best bagel I've had recently was at the new Old Salt in Ballard. The saltiness of the crust is so nice.
If I want to make a meal of it I like to get some lox and cream cheese, but typically I'll just get plain cream cheese on an everything bagel — or pumpernickel if they have it, which in Seattle they usually don't.
Emily Alhadoff, journalist and writer, The Cholent
The embarrassing truth is that my favorite bagel is a toasted sesame seed with plain cream cheese in the Boston Logan Airport Dunkin Donuts after a redeye.
Here in Seattle? I'll give some love to Einstein's - sesame toasted with plain cream cheese, of course.
Hannah Exner, writer, Seeking Seattle & Reflected
My new favorite bagel spot is Hey Bagel, but since it's currently pop-up only, I'm getting my bagel fix at Mt. Bagel.
I like to change up my order often, but my go-to is an everything bagel with whatever the specialty cream cheese is — as long as it's not sweet. If there isn't anything fun, my fallback is always scallion.
Aimee Rizzo, senior editor, The Infatuation Seattle
I’ve been a Mt. Bagel groupie since Day One, and I still do pledge their allegiance. Sure, the bagels don’t have the majestic crackle they once had in their pop-up days of yore, but a massive brown bag of those malty suckers still makes my day.
My go-to order: I grew up on Long Island where you’re born into either a cream cheese family or a butter family. The Rizzos are butter folk, and thus, my perfect bagel order is an extra dark untoasted everything smeared with a thin layer of salted butter, softened just enough to become custardy. Unless we’re talking about Mt. Bagel—in which case, bury me in that cayenne-stained spicy scallion cream cheese.
Jeremiah Oshan, editor of Sounder at Heart
First off, I wanted to say I'm a big fan of this newsletter. I've been reading it from something close to the beginning and have found it really helpful in hunting down bagel spots worth trying.
The TL;DR of my go-to order is "untoasted everything with cream cheese." As to my favorite spot, that's a little more complicated. My personal philosophy is that the best bagel is probably the freshest one you can most readily access.
For instance, I used to be a diehard Grateful Bread fan mainly because I could reliably get them fresh since my kids' preschool was down the street. Now that I have no reason to be in Wedgwood, I rarely go there. I am more apt to go out of my way to get Bagel Oasis and am particularly partial to them mainly because they are one of the few places serving up pumpernickel bagels.
I also recently tried Hey Bagel and have to admit that I agree with Sean that they are probably the best bagel in the region, just edging out my previous personal favorite Little Market. I feel like it's cheating to say my "go-to order" is someplace I have to order from weeks in advance ... But holding to my ethos, I'm going to say my go-to bagel order is "an untoasted everything with cream cheese from Old Salt." I live very close to their original location, I rarely need to stand in a long line, and they make a really damn good bagel. If I need a bagel fix, that's where I'm going.
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