Berkeley Bagels
The land of granola is home to what might be the Bay Area's oldest bagel shop. Has this place aged like a fine wine or is it getting stale?
On the corner of Santa Fe Avenue and Gilman Street in northwest Berkeley, you can find what may be the oldest bagel shop in the Bay Area. Berkeley Bagels has been open since 1974, and at 49 years old, its age is definitely beginning to show. The hand-painted window illustrations are slowly flaking into non-existence. The interior’s a bit crusty and the classic chalk paint menu was probably drawn in the mid 90s. The adorable parade of anthropomorphic bagel critters painted below the menu are so dirty and smudged you can barely read what their little speech bubbles are saying.
I mention these details not to dissuade you. Old and dirty? That’s my kinda place.
Squinting at the menu, I make out a little bagel person reading a book, saying “So ‘schmear’ is a verb meaning to spread. Not a word for cream cheese.”
Debatable.
Another bagel critter proudly proclaims: “Our bagels are completely natural, made with no artificial ingredients and no refined sugar.” It goes without saying that sugar is not, nor has ever been, a primary bagel ingredient (although some flavors like cinnamon raisin are sweeter than others). On the east coast this would amount to bagel-splaining, which is offensive. But this place opened in Berkeley in the 70s. If you weren’t all natural, they would run you outta town on a rail!
Taking a glance at the menu, I was very pleased to see that the prices here are exceptionally reasonable. I ordered a poppy seed bagel with cream cheese ($3.30) and an everything with lox ($8.99). This is the absolute perfect price point for a lox bagel. Any less would be highly suspicious. But any more and you’re painfully reminded that you live in the Bay Area. Berkeley Bagels scores big points for having a menu that truly reflects bagels as daily bread as opposed to a gourmet treat.
I was already beginning to feel at home in this place, when I turned to my left and was delighted to see a self-serve coffee station with all the fixings.
As any east coaster knows, you do not go to the bagel store for “good” coffee. It is mandatory that every bagel store have at least one counter laden with hand-pump carafes filled with highly mediocre coffee that is brewed once in the morning and never refreshed throughout the day. If the place is truly authentic, there will be weird flavors like Hazelnut or Butter Pecan, the kind of flavors only your Aunt Kathy would drink.
There must also be a big bowl of sugar, some quarts of milk and half-and-half, an assortment of cheap tea bags, and a messy pile of lids and spoons strewn all over the counter, because east coasters are always in a rush and can’t be bothered to tidy up after themselves.
I am proud to report that Berkeley Bagels meets every one of these criteria. The small coffee cost $2 ($1 for refills!) and it tasted delightfully mediocre, necessitating a big spoon of sugar and a healthy dash of half-and-half.
My Californian readers may be asking, “Why on earth would you want to drink bad coffee?”
To which I say, “Shut your snobby pie holes! It’s tradition, that’s why!”
Seriously, if I wanted bougie coffee (and I often do) I would head to the nearest overpriced hipster coffee spot, of which there are many. But when I go to the bagel shop, I want something cheap, creamy and sweet and that’s just the way it is. So thank you, Berkeley Bagels, for keeping it real.
Waiting for my order, I made a close inspection of what appeared to be a highly traditional display of metal wire baskets stacked in neat rows. Sadly, they were all nearly empty, with only the everything basket filled with anything resembling a bounty.
They also had a couple baskets of hilariously dumb flavors like “seed city” and “cranberry.” Clearly these are reserved for Berkeley natives who wouldn’t know a real bagel if I slapped them in the face with one. There was also an “olive/salt” bagel which low key sounds pretty good, but I had already placed my order. If you’ve tried the olive/salt, let me know how it is in the comments.
Sitting atop the counter were even more traditional delights that straight up transported me back to Jersey. There were bags of freshly baked challah bread, a display of fat, juicy muffins, and even some freshly baked cookies (no black and white cookies here, but a guy can dream, right?)
Berkeley Bagels really does get a lot of things right. At least, until the bagels came out. As much as I found myself rooting for this place, unfortunately, I can’t describe the bagels as good.
The poppy with cream cheese was dry as a bone. It was schmeared with a very healthy amount of cream cheese, and the cream cheese itself was of good quality. But this bagel was small, dry, and tasted rather stale. It did have a nice density to it, and would probably have tasted quite good if it was toasted. But as my readers should know by now, you cannot judge a bagel’s quality if it's toasted. To pass the Jersey Boy Test™, it needs to taste decent straight out of the basket. And this bagel did not pass that test. As a consolation prize, I will say the layer of poppy seeds on this bagel was thicc as hell, and I appreciated that.
The everything bagel with lox actually tasted a bit more fresh than the poppy, which makes sense: everythings remain the most popular bagel of all time, and the higher turnover equates to fresher bagels.
Wait a moment, I think I’m having an epiphany… what if the reason most California bagels suck ass is because there simply aren't enough people buying bagels? Think about it… if the demand is low, the bagel shops will only bake a few rounds of bagels a day, which means customers will inevitably be served less-than-fresh bagels. And because they don’t taste as good, folks are less excited to return, thus initiating a death spiral, where low demand reinforces low quality, and low quality reinforces low demand…
Fuck. This is a really depressing thought. I’m gonna shelve this idea for now.
After enjoying my bagels - and I did enjoy them, despite the aforementioned drawbacks - I made my way back to the counter to make a few more observations. A piece of printer paper hanging on the wall advertised a “Hoboken Tuna Melt.” Could it be?!
Hoboken is a city in northern New Jersey. Today it's a yuppie hellscape, but back in the day, it was a very real and authentic place, sort of like Jersey City before it was gentrified.
“Hey, are you guys from New Jersey?” I asked a woman behind the counter. She raised her eyebrows looking absolutely dumbfounded.
“I just ask because Hoboken is a city in Jersey, and you sell a Hoboken Tuna Melt, so I thought you might be from there.”
“No, we’re from Cambodia!” the woman laughed. Turns out, all three of the women running this bagel shop were Cambodian.
Only in California!
Final Thoughts
Berkeley Bagels is a very traditional no-frills bagel shop with cheap prices, quick service, no lines, and all the fixings of back home. The bagels themselves are decidedly mid. But that doesn't mean you should avoid this place. At nearly 50 years old, Berkeley Bagels has been holding down an authentic east coast experience for a very long time, and I commend them for their service.
Final Review
West Coast: 7
East Coast: 5