Courtesy of Kohn's Kosher Meat & Deli
On the East Coast, January 15 is known to many as National Bagel Day. Here in St. Louis, however, it’s an overlooked "holiday."
You might be wondering, Where can you get a good bagel in St. Louis anyway? Beyond Saint Louis Bread Co., there are only a handful of local bakeries and restaurants across the metro region that sell them.
Courtesy Kohn's
“A lot of people talk about starting bagel places," says Lenny Kohn, owner of Kohn’s Kosher, "but I just don’t know if there’s enough volume to support more prevailers in the St. Louis market.” Kohn’s Kosher sells homemade savory bagels, from plain to poppy, sesame to Tzitzel (a rye bread rolled in cornmeal). Kohn's bakes anywhere between 120 and 250 bagels daily and sells the remainder for 50 cents the following day. Kohn prefers a tighter, tougher dough, steering away from the New York-style bagel.
Courtesy of Pizza Head STL
Scott Sandler, owner of Pizza Head, launched side gig Bagel Brain in 2019. The venture specializes in bagels made with wheat bran, to provide more nutritional value. “To me, it’s not so much the boiling of the bagel that makes the bagel," he says. "It’s the recipe."
Bagel Brain started as a huge success. “We sold out five days a week every day for, like, a month,” Sandler recalls. “Then it slowly got worse. Then we were doing them four days, then three, then two—and we still couldn't sell them out.”
Jamil Jabbar, owner of Boogyz Donuts, learned how to make New York-style bagels in New Jersey and brought the practice to his bakery in St. Louis. The art to making his bagels is perfecting the use of sponge, a yeast-like mixture.
“When I first opened, I was making hella bagels, and then I’d throw them all away,” Jabbar says. “Right now, people still think Boogyz is just a doughnut shop. Every day, I try to get at least six of each kind just to have them there. I keep growing and growing it, so people know we have bagels.”
Courtesy of Companion Baking
Companion Baking steams its bagels in-house and utilizes sponge in its long fermenting process, although owner Josh Allen prefers a boiled bagel. "Because of the long fermentation of the dough, we feel like we still get a quality product," he says. "There is an art to a great bagel that, on a small scale, can be terrific and wonderful, so I hope we can see a proliferation of artisanal bakers come back."
Additional St. Louis spots that serve homemade bagels include Dough Joe's St. Louis, Living Room Coffee & Kitchen, Pumpernickels Delicatessen, Olio (featuring a Jerusalem bagel, an oval shape topped with Za'atar, a blend of Middle Eastern spices), and Bagel Factory (long regarded as the premier baker of New York-style bagels in St. Louis).
Byrd & Barrel owner Bob Brazell launched Bagel Champ two years ago. The bagels were traditional New York–style, kettle-boiled and made with a malt syrup sourced from Earthbound Beer. Brazell learned he could make a respectable profit by turning them into sandwiches, rather than selling them alone, and featured a rotation of collabs with local restaurants each week.
Courtesy Byrd & Barrel
Bagel Champ's Pumped-up Strami sandwich was served on an everything bagel.
“At that time, there was really nobody else besides Bagel Factory making legit bagels in St. Louis, so it was something we really dove into,” Brazell says. “We had fun with it, and it ran for a couple months. It’s a tough thing–working ‘til midnight or 1 a.m. on Friday, then coming in at 5 or 6 in the morning to make the sales on Saturday, and do it again on Sunday. It took a lot of time, and once it started to die off, it just became not worth it for us.”
Brazell hopes to bring Bagel Champ back when Byrd & Barrel reopens, which is slated to be this summer at the restaurant's new location on Hampton Avenue. “We really love the brand," he says. "It’s still something that’s on our radar once the time is right—you know, once we’re back to a somewhat normal world.”
As for how St. Louisans slice their bagels? Well, that's a topic for another day.
