In New Orleans, baker Breanne Kostyk doesn’t describe the bagel she makes at Flour Moon Bagels as New York or Montreal styles. It’s just an “artisanal bagel,” as far as she’s concerned. Her sourdough bagels are cold-fermented and spiked with Louisiana cane syrup, then get hand-rolled, kettle-boiled, and baked at 500 degrees. They’re crisp and chewy on the outside, and supple once you break through. On weekends, people queue up outside the shop, which Kostyk opened in 2022 with her partner Jeff Hinson.
In San Francisco, the bagels Alex Rogers sells each week at his Bernal Heights pop-up, Chicken Dog Bagels (named for Rogers’s old chihuahua, Chicken), are colored by nostalgia. Rogers grew up in Connecticut, and it was always a special treat when his dad commuted home from Manhattan with a still-steamy paper bag of H&H bagels. Still, he doesn’t describe his product as a New York bagel—because it’s not. “Even though I’m not trying to replicate any kind of New York bagel, it hits enough of the points for people that they keep coming back,” says Rogers, whose bagels regularly sell out within a few hours of him opening shop on Saturdays.
Rogers worked at San Francisco’s iconic now closed 20th Century Cafe back in 2014, when he learned to make distinctly California-style sourdough bagels from chef-owner Michelle Polzine. Over the years, he developed his own style of bagel, which was slightly larger and less dense than what Polzine was known for. A Chicken Dog bagel is hand-rolled, made with organic flour, and dragged through the classic seasonings.
Beyond how they ferment or hand-roll, bakers outside of New York are turning their attention to creative, out-there toppings you won’t find at most shops in our bagel capital. And as a lot of bakers in a lot of different cities seem to have realized, the best way to show off peak-season produce and artfully made schmears is to un-sandwich your bagel.
In Portland, Maine, an open-face bagel at Rose Foods comes topped with horseradish cream cheese, avocado, and little pearls of tobiko. Starship Bagel, which has locations in Dallas and Lewisville, Texas, tops its avocado toast-inspired one with cream cheese, avocado, pickled onion, and a tangle of sprouts. And at Flour Moon, people line up for tartines (in this case, that’s French for “open-face bagel”). There’s one slathered with roasted carrot spread, tahini, and dukkah, and another that sports sunflower seed butter, tahini, bananas, dates, and a drizzle of honey.
It’s an admittedly impractical way to build a bagel if you’re used to eating it on the move. That’s at least partly the point, though: inviting people to spend a bit more time appreciating something they may think of as a food of convenience. “The style of dining in New Orleans is so different than places like New York that are always on the go,” says Kostyk. “We sit down. We take the time to have meals at any time of day.”
One of Courage’s artfully made, produce-covered bagels.Photograph by Tracy Nguyen for Bon Appétit
