Can I find a good Seattle bagel at... Whidbey Island Bagel Factory
Is it worth the hour-long car ride for Seattle bagel lovers?
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 ensure I review any specific bagels (or want to let me know why I’m wrong), you can email me at seanmatthewkeeley@gmail.com.
When I started investigating the bagel shops that I would need to visit for this newsletter, I was surprised to see so many “Best Bagels in Seattle” lists including Whidbey Island Bagel Factory. Not just because they are decidedly not located within Seattle but because if WIBF had such good bagels, I should have already known that.
I lived on Whidbey Island for three years. At the time, I wasn’t in the same bagel mindset as I am today, but I was still a transplanted Northeastern Jew who loves bagels. So you’d think that, given my proximity to a place considered to have some of the best bagels in the region, I’d be singing their praises up and down the Sound.
I did remember going to their Clinton location a handful of times. But to be honest, I didn’t remember much about their bagels. Fast forward to now and the whole thing left me feeling confused. Was I just not paying attention to what was right in front of me? Or was this another case of overhype from the Seattle Industrial Bagel Complex?
John Auburn was destined to be a baker. In fact, his original claim to fame was winning a baking competition on the Food Network after creating a Seattle skyline-themed cake that netted him $10,000. After that, he won another $10,000 on TLC’s “Ultimate Cake Off,” thanks to a 500-pound, Nutcracker-themed cake.
After cementing himself as Whidbey Island’s ace of cakes, Auburn switched gears, buying a bagel shop in Clinton and turning it into the first Whidbey Island Bagel Factory. Auburn’s focus, which takes New York-style bagels and heightens the flavors while also experimenting with new flavors (like a Banh Mi Bagel), was a big hit with locals and even started attracting interest from east coasters.
“I have heard people say 'bagels on Whidbey Island? They don't know how to make bagels!' but those New Yorkers and those east coasters, they'll come here all the time!” Auburn told King5 last year.
Delish named theirs the best bagels in Washington in 2018 while Eater Seattle added them to their list of essential Seattle-area bagels.
In 2018, WIBF opened a second location in Oak Harbor, cementing its role as the island’s go-to bagel source. In 2021, a third location opened in Mt. Vernon, taking WIBF onto the mainland. Things took a turn in 2022 when the effects of the pandemic caused Auburn to close the Clinton location due to a lack of available staffing. However, it now sounds like they’ve reopened the original spot. Auburn has also previously said that he plans for additional locations in Bothell, Mukilteo, and Edmonds.
It would seem that Whidbey Island Bagel Factory is looking to plant its flag as the premiere local bagel chain of Skagit, Island, Snohomish, and North King counties. It’ll be interesting to see if they ever decide to take on the likes of Rubinstein, Blazing Bagels, and Eltana for the Seattle area. But in the meantime, it sure seems like theirs is a bagel that needs to be sampled and considered among the city’s offerings.
As a former Whidbey Islander, I know how protective they can be about their local favorites. So let’s find out if the hype is real.
And if you want to know how I define a good bagel, you can find that here.
WHAT I ORDERED
Everything bagel with roasted garlic & chive cream cheese.
Plain bagel as is.
Egg & cheese on a salt bagel.
THE EXPERIENCE
On a rainy Sunday morning, I made the drive up I-5 to Mt. Vernon to see what things are like during prime bagel-buying time. The shop itself is located on a sleepy corner of town and has a particularly inviting ambiance thanks to the renovated 1921 building that takes advantage of industrial vibes while also offering some PNW charm.
The crowd was light and I was able to order immediately. At $2.00 for a plain bagel and $2.88 for an everything bagel, that’s about the most reasonable local pricing I’ve seen so far compared to the Northeast. For a place that prides itself on flavor selection, I was disappointed to see very limited cream cheese variants, so I went with the roasted garlic & chive over the plain. I also decided to get an egg and cheese on a salt bagel for the ride home, which ended up being a fortuitous choice for reasons I’ll get to.
UPON FIRST GLANCE
All of the bagels are front and center in the display racks when you walk in and I immediately noticed an interesting texture on the tops. They didn’t seem to resemble the classic bagel top but instead had a lot of wrinkles and crannies that could either turn out really good or really weird.
The bagels were also extremely un-uniform, which I also thought could go either way. At the very least, you could see these were hand-rolled and small batch, which you have to appreciate.
TOP
Soft. These bagels are sooooft. Soft to the point where I poked the top of the plain bagel with medium effort and broke the exterior. I’ve eaten a lot of non-crispy bagels during this adventure but I've never come across anything like this.
As for the everything bagel, I was very happy to see an extremely strong seed hand here. The seed distribution was poppy seed forward, but I liked the overall coverage. If you’re gonna make an everything bagel, make an everything bagel, you know? There was no salt in the mix, however, which I’ve come to accept is how most bagel places do it here but isn’t my preference for reasons that will soon be explained.
The color of the bagel top itself was a light brown and appeared slightly undercooked to me. The softness of the top also seemed to indicate that, though the more I learn about WIBF the more I think that’s on purpose.
The plain bagel was the one I slightly poked and broke the top of, which didn’t bode well. This one was slightly browned, more so than the everything bagel, but still lacked any kind of firmness.
Upon further inspection, the aforementioned wrinkly top didn’t seem to detract from anything, but it did make me wonder how it happened. My best guess is that the bagel was still wet from the boil before it was baked and it left behind a mottled appearance in the dough.
BOTTOM
Just like with the tops, the bottoms of both bagels were extremely soft and lacking in any kind of crispness. On the everything bagel, it appeared as those the bottom was almost carmelized in a way. The plain appeared to have a hint of cornmeal but there was no ring of doom to be found.
The plain bagel did have a tiny nub sticking out of the side that, when pressed, flaked in a way that implied there was a slight crunch to be found there. But that was it.
INSIDE/BITE
On the everything bagel, the bite was extremely soft all the way through as expected. Absolutely no crunch to be found. Instead, the interior was extremely doughy on the firmer side. It lacked that quintessential bagel smell, though it also didn’t smell sourdough-y either. It felt like biting into a really doughy piece of bread or an under-toasted English muffin.
The lack of salt in the everything seasoning also cut the flavor, which ended up creating a situation where you have a whole lot going on that doesn’t really taste of much.
The cream cheese was more garlic than chive. Since the bagel itself didn’t offer much flavor, I felt like I was essentially eating garlic-flavored bread, which doesn’t sound bad on paper but wasn’t what I was looking for at 9:00 a.m.
As for the plain bagel, the first thing I noticed when I got close to the bagel was a sweet smell, almost as if the bagel had been co-mingling with donuts and cinnamon rolls. After biting into the bagel, even the interior had a slightly sweet tang to it, which made me wonder if the same dough was being used for the bagels and sweet pastries and they somehow got mixed.
As expected, the bagel was an extremely soft bite throughout. No crunch on the outside and a very dense interior. I’m not opposed to a bagel with a dense inside so long as there’s some flavor to imbue the experience with a sense that I’m eating something delicious. However, this bagel didn’t have the requisite bagel smell or flavor that I’d ideally want. And so, after a few bites, I realized I was just eating a really doughy gutbomb for the sake of it.
This is where I want to bring back that egg and cheese sandwich on the salt bagel. That ended up being pretty decent and the only flavorful thing that I got out of the trip. And after sampling all three, I think I realized that these bagels benefit greatly from sandwich situations and being loaded up with other spreads.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I think I understand why people love these bagels. I think there’s room for quality soft bagels that are super doughy in the sense that they make really good sandwich bagels. And looking at WIBF’s menu, that does appear to be where they shine.
But in terms of the bagels themselves, I think that my experience here helped me make sense of how I lived on Whidbey Island for three years and never came away raving about how amazing our local bagel place was.
Is It Good Enough For The Goys?
I have a running theory that a lot of people enjoy bagel sandwiches and then equate the overall bagel sandwich experience to mean that they loved the bagel itself. You can slap a crapton of meat and veggies or a decadent spread on a so-so bagel and come away thinking the bagel itself was really good. I think WIBF is a home run for that kind of bagel appreciator and their bagels are fine-tuned for that palette.
Is It Good Enough For Northeastern Jews?
Look, I’m not saying that every bagel needs to find the perfect balance between crispness and softness or crunch and fluff. But you gotta give us something. Literally anything in terms of balance and flavor. For a place that prides itself on bold flavors, I’d love to see more cream cheese options as well. To their credit, the prices are way more in line with what Northeasterners are accustomed to than the shocking sticker prices at places like Rubinstein and Loxsmith. But I didn’t come away from my two hours of driving feeling like it was worth the trip.
P.S. - I’m going to hold off on adding non-Seattle bagel spots to my rankings for now. My goal will be to eventually create a regional ranking to accompany the Seattle-only one. But if you’re wondering, I would probably slot WIBF somewhere around the Rachel’s/Macrina zone.
MY SEATTLE BAGEL RANKINGS SO FAR
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We visited this shop in Mt Vernon. As we live in Snohomish County, we were hopeful. But our overall adjective would be: gummy. Sigh.
WIBF took a big hit in quality around the time they opened the MV spot. I worked at the Clinton location during their build-out. The ingredients, recipe, process (machine rolled!), and oven are all the same in both locations. They used to have a little bit of crisp, and weren't as doughy inside. But either they got sloppy with process, or they just don't care about consistency. They roll > freeze > proof in walk-in > boil and straight to the oven. The wrinkles happen when they skip the proof step and go straight from frozen. They use a pre-fab "bagel mix" that's largely malt powder, and the bagels intermingle with the cinnamon ones at times, so there's your sweet.
I'm glad you put them on the list. Shame you didn't catch them earlier when I was there and did my damnedest to hold them to my former-UWS resident standard.