St Louis Bagels - the results are in
Several followers of the bagel quest suggested I add St. Louis to the list. So I did. And they were right — St Louis has a great bagel scene!
Before I quest to a new city, I dig through the digitized newspaper archives to trace its bagel footprint. These St. Louis bagel ads from the 1940s and 1950s were very confident in their bagel prowess. ‘Bagel Bill’ telling people to buy bagels at The Clardel, the Iowa Bakery extolling their ‘Real Boiled Bagels’, Fontenelle Bakery advertising their ‘Pure egg bagel’, Lickhalter Bakery proclaiming that ‘Lickhalter means bagels,’ and so on. A 1977 article on the St Louis bagel scene recommended Lickhalter’s Bakery, Petrofsky’s Bakery, Pratzel’s, Bagel Factory, and New York Bagelry for fresh bagels. At least historically, St Louis knew a thing or two about a bagel.
My overall opinion on St Louis bagels
I can honestly say that each place my friend Jenny Pressman and I visited made a very good bagel. And we learned that there is such a thing as a Tzitzel bagel, cornmeal crusted, which is a big thing in St Louis bagel world. (I wrote about this St. Louis bagel speciality here.)
St. Louis has no long-standing, multi-generational bagel shops, so I had my reservations heading in. I identified four bagel shops that bake their bagels on the premises. All of them opened in the last few years. We visited Lefty’s Bagels, Union Bagel, and Baked and Boiled. (I would have visited Bagels and Bliss1, but the shop was closed for the weekend. I did visit Amighetti's, a historic Italian sandwich shop. While their cannoli was great, the bagel was so substandard I am discounting it from my bagel findings.)
The bagel scene was hopping — all three shops had a full line of customers when we showed up.
Judging: I have very specific - and New York centered - judging criteria. You can read my full description here.
Category one: Will I walk half a mile out of my way to buy and eat one of their bagels? This is admittedly a high bar. I grew up eating bagels in NY, where the turnover was high and the bagels were coming out of the oven fresh all day. Upshot: does this bagel taste amazing enough to put in the effort to get to it?
Category two: Would I buy a dozen bagels for a proper bagel spread? Upshot: How Jewish is this bagel?
First stop: Lefty’s Bagels. Walking into Lefty’s, although it was in a strip mall, once inside the shop felt recognizably Jewish. Maybe it was the people in it who were eating the bagels, maybe it was the array of smoked fish you could buy, the whitefish spread, or that they had a bialy on the menu. You can tell that they can put together a shiva or bat-mitzvah spread without breaking a sweat. Setting up this visit, I had a fun email exchange with Scott Lefton, a co-owner. He said, “I read your email thread with my brother-in-law Doug and I think what you are doing is AMAZING!” Which is exactly the kind of energy I like from a total stranger who is similarly bagel-obsessed. I ended up talking with Doug who described their bagel-making techniques, why they left their IT jobs to bake and sell bagels, and the ocean-to-deli-counter trajectory for their lox.
Category one: Will I walk half a mile out of my way to buy and eat one of their bagels? No. It pains me to say this, but no. The bagels were good and structurally sound, but they came out of the oven at 6 am, and it was almost 11 am when I tasted them. After an hour or two out of the oven, bagels lose some of their crisp exterior texture and flavor. Warming it up in a toaster can fix this, but I am not walking out of my way to bring a bagel home to toast.
Category two: Would I buy a dozen bagels for a proper bagel spread? YES! Lefty’s is my first choice of where to go for a bagel spread. They have the best selection of bagel spread accoutrements, and their white fish was delicious. In the audio below, you can hear Jenny and me rave about it. Any self-respecting bagel spread host has the oven on low and a cookie sheet lined with aluminum foil ready to heat the bagels, and a Lefty’s bagel would be an outstanding vessel for a pile of lox.
Second stop: Union Bagel. We were greeted by a line of people extending out the door. That boded well for the bagels and did not disappoint. I didn’t get a chance to talk to the owners, and they don’t have any information on their website, so I don’t know their bagel-making origin story or their baking techniques. But whatever they are doing results in a very tasty bagel. (I know that a busy small business owner has no reason to respond to a random email/Instagram message from a random person on a self-appointed bagel quest, but it is possible that I have an unwarranted minor grudge that seeped into the judging.)
Category one: Will I walk half a mile out of my way to buy and eat one of their bagels? YES! Their Tzitzelnickel bagel was delicious, and the tastiest bagel I ate all weekend. (The Tzitzelnickel bagel is a pumpernickel bagel with toasted cornmeal on the outside of the bagel.) I would definitely walk out of my way to buy one, and eat it on my walk home. The woman at the counter said they came out of the oven about an hour and a half before I got there. You can hear in my conversation with Jenny below that we were not a fan of the vibe of the bagel shop, but thought the bagels were particularly flavorful.
Category two: Would I buy a dozen bagels for a proper bagel spread? Yes. These bagels would be lovely with a bagel spread. And while I can not confirm this because I did not travel with tuna fish, I just know that the Tzitzelnickel bagel will pair perfectly with tuna fish and cucumbers.
Third stop: Baked and Boiled. The look and feel of this place is right up my alley. It is a former cupcake shop and has all sorts of charming details, from the bagel bins to the old lamps. I had a chance to talk with Alex, the owner, and heard about the bagels of her childhood in Tampa Bay, Florida, that inspired her love of bagels. The bagels are hand-rolled, and during the twenty minutes I was in the shop, I could see bagels going in and coming out of the oven, so they were fresh and tasted that way.
Category one: Will I walk half a mile out of my way to buy and eat one of their bagels? YES! I am particularly intense about bagels having a great exterior crispness to them, and to my taste, Baked and Boiled had the best exterior texture. Plus the bagels were fresh out of the oven and were covered with flavorful seeds.
Category two: Would I buy a dozen bagels for a proper bagel spread? YES. These bagels would be a great vessel for a bagel spread. The structure of these bagels are sound and it can withstand a pile of toppings. Plus, they are so beautiful with all the seeds that the basket of bagels would impress.
Final stop: Protzel’s Deli. I read that this had been a landmark deli since 1954, so Jenny and I decided to stop by on our way home and pick up some deli to bring home. I thought I was going to bring a container of chicken soup home, but was distracted by the knish, babka, and pickles. This was definitely the most Jewish experience of the trip and most familiar to the NY delis of my childhood. Maybe it was when I asked about the bagels they sold in a bag, and the guy behind the counter (who seemed like the owner) told me not to buy them, they weren’t good enough for someone on a bagel quest. Or maybe it was when several people in the store weighed in on the parking meter issue I had. Or maybe it was when a couple of the customers in line got involved in my knish order, because getting involved in other people’s business is to me part of the full New York Jewish deli experience. Or maybe it was the fact that there was a beef brisket knish and store-made pickle for me to buy. Or maybe it was just the sticker on the cash register proclaiming their love of schmaltz. But Protzel’s Deli was the perfect way to end my St Louis visit.
Bonus content:
A friend of mine has a brother who lives in St Louis and does biking tours of Jewish historical sites and he put visiting the former United Hebrew Congregation synagogue on the top of the list. The building did not disappoint. It is gorgeous and I now want to organize my life so I can sit in that space and write about bagels surrounded by this loveliness. The congregation was founded in 1837, the first Jewish congregation in St. Louis, and is the oldest west of the Mississippi River. In the 1920s the congregation built this synagogue and it is now the Library and Collections Center for the Missouri Historical Society. I spent a few minutes looking through their card catalogue and added to my supply of bagel articles from the 1970s.
I talked to Giti Fredman on the phone and got her bagel backstory and it sure sounds like the Bagels and Bliss bagels would be good as well. She sells a ‘Just Bake It’ bagel kit that she left on her front porch for me to take home.
The St. Louis travel board should pay you. Your post made me want to go there. Love it!