Lefty’s Bagels & Café temporarily closes Creve Coeur location

In a Sunday afternoon email, the owners of Lefty’s Bagels & Café (8 Millstone Campus Drive) announced that their seven-month old location on the grounds of the St. Louis Jewish Community Center in Creve Coeur has temporarily closed “for the purpose of restructuring.” The pause allows Lefty’s “to focus on strengthening our operations, so we can better serve our guests in the future.” The last day of service at the Creve Coeur location was January 18.

Courtesy of Lefty's

Courtesy of Lefty's

The correspondence thanked guests for their understanding and continued support, and it encouraged them to visit the Lefty’s Bagels location in Chesterfield (13359 Olive). Gift cards and loyalty rewards will continue to be valid at this location. The email (and subsequent social media post) provided no additional details regarding the closure.

Reached today, owners Doug Goldenberg and Scott “Lefty” Lefton had no further comment.

The Backstory

Courtesy of Doug Goldenberg

Courtesy of Doug Goldenberg

Lefton, a home brewer and competitive chili cook, never planned to open a bagel shop. But after rave reviews of his homemade bagels, he partnered with Goldenberg, his brother-in-law and a fellow food lover with a background in food service. The pair spent two years refining their recipes at The Trolley Stop Bakery in Chesterfield before opening a storefront at 13359 Olive in 2021. Demand was instant, with production racing to keep up for bagels that Lefton described as “bready but not so dense.”

In a conversation with SLM‘s Cheryl Baehr last year, Goldenberg noted that “there are three types of ways to make bagels: Montreal, New York, and what we call ‘Panera-style.’ For us, the traits we wanted are a nice shiny, firm crust and a bagel that is not bready but chewy. We wanted it to be firm but not so dense that it sits like a brick in the stomach.” 

Courtesy of Lefty's

Courtesy of Lefty's

Last year, an opportunity to expand arose when HJ’s Café closed at The J’s Mirowitz Center in Creve Coeur. By April, Lefton and Goldenberg had secured the space and transformed it into a full-scale café. While bagels continued to be made in Chesterfield, the new 4,400-square-foot location offered an expanded breakfast and deli menu, in-house baking, seating for up to 140 guests, and the ability to host everything from family celebrations to large corporate events.