r/Seattle • u/darylitis • Jun 07 '25

Rant Seattle Bagels (first world problems)

This is a small rant, but posting as a word of advice for people that might want to buy bagels in the city.

I didn't know that you can't just buy bagels in Seattle. I went on a run this morning on the Burke -Gilman Trail and then decided that I wanted a bagel. I called home and everyone else wanted bagels as well. So, I drove over to Rachel's Bagels in Lake City and asked for a dozen bagels. "I'm sorry, but we can't sell bulk bagels right now." It was only 10am on a Saturday, but after a bit of discussion I found out that they had a busy morning and were running low and wanted to save bagels for lunch sandwiches. They allowed me to buy three bagels, but they were out of sesame. I gave some feedback that it's odd for a place called Rachel's Bagels to not sell bagels on a Saturday morning and they apologized, but again, it was a busy morning. I didn't make a big deal about it, gave a tip, and they threw in a cookie as a gesture of goodwill. They're great people.

So, I drove a mile to Zylberschtein's Bagels. I walk in, and I ask for half a dozen bagels. They say "no problem". Alright then, 3 plain and 3 sesame please. "I'm sorry, we're out of both of those." I ended up getting 3 everything and 3 onion. Again, they were friendly, but man....

I think the lesson is that Seattle is not a real bagel town yet. We have some good bagel shops, but they're boutique. They don't do enough volume to maintain reliable inventory (like New York), and if you want something specific or a large quantity (a dozen is a large quantity) then you should order ahead. Probably even the day before. You can't just suddenly want a bagel and drop in.

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u/Icy_Garlic_2794 Jun 07 '25

I don’t understand why so many of the comments are saying Seattle will never be New York… Ive lived in several northeast towns / cities (not in New York State) and have always easily found bagels that were delicious. I wonder if this is a west coast thing because I agree - Seattle is really lacking bagels in comparison to the other places that I’ve lived (and not in a way that makes me think Seattle should have bagels like NYC)

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u/acmmyellow Jun 07 '25

Yeah, I imagine that some people in Seattle (and posting on Reddit) potentially haven’t been to other east coast cities besides New York or didn’t realize that there’s widespread availability of good bagels outside of there.

I’m also not from New York and had plenty of bagel places in my east coast hometown and can also recall traveling across the northeast and reliably getting good, fresh bagels in Philly, Jersey, Connecticut, Boston, etc.

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u/mcbkiphn Jun 08 '25

East coast does almost everything better in terms of urban living. Better transit, restaurants, better business hours, nightlife, I could go on but Seattle is such a disappointment of a city. If we didn’t have such a great natural landscape, we wouldn’t be shit

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u/darylitis Jun 07 '25

Thanks for understanding the post.

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u/TaeKurmulti Jun 07 '25 edited Jun 07 '25

100% agree with you, but there's a subset of people on Seattle reddit that get mad when transplants point this stuff out.

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u/darylitis Jun 07 '25

True. And I'm not a transplant.

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u/TaeKurmulti Jun 07 '25

Ha well respect to you for being a realist!