The bagel shop itself does indeed have a subway tile floor/cool bench seating/fancy cream cheese option going for it, but in defense of the bagel, this place is a 3. You can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig. Or in this case, you can put fancy cream cheese on an average bagel, but it is still an average bagel.
I had a sesame bagel with veggie cream cheese. With five people working behind this counter (man...there must be payroll to burn at R&R!), the execution of ordering to getting the bagel into my belly seemed to take a bit of time than I would have thought. With 5 people behind that tiny counter, that place should work at mock one speed. My husband commented on the same thing.
Maybe it is the water (because from pizza dough to bagels, often the water makes the biggest difference), but there was nothing about the bagel itself that I can say was out of the ordinary or exceptional. It was moderately doughy like I can get from a bag of bagels purchased from the grocery store doughy. Not doughy like..."Man, that think was homemade somewhere in an oven in this town at 5AM this morning!"
The schmears of cream cheese available do look fun and tasty, but since I was underwhelmed by the average bagel. the topping meant little to me at that point. My veggie cream cheese was actually light orange in color without a single green/orange/yellow or even red speck of a veggie in it. So clearly they use maybe peppers or tomatoes or all other non-green veggies, but my head thinks green when the word veggie is the descriptive adjective. And many customers would be more about the fancy topping versus the foundation of the bagel, so this might be your new favorite bagel spot.
The ambiance is cool and there were lots of people there. I think the location would make this a great spot with the working crowd as a grab and go option, but for bagels at this point, I am going to stick with Schragel's (which is much less fancy...no fancy subway tile or seating at all that place, but a superior bagel). read more