Call Your Mother, Moe’s, Leroy’s

When Joshua Pollack first started serving New York-style bagels at Rosenberg’s Bagels & Delicatessen in 2014, Denver was practically a bagel desert.

“I couldn’t get bagels with schmear or lox really anywhere in Denver,” Pollack said. “There were no, in my opinion, traditional East Coast bagel shops in Colorado, period. I longed for the food. It’s part of my soul and heritage. It’s my connection to my community, family and ancestors.

Moe’s Broadway Bagel, which first opened in Boulder in 1992, was the “king of the castle,” at the time, Pollack said.

But over the last decade, Pollack, a New York City native, set a precedent for East Coast transplants and customers craving that chewy New York-style bagel. He even has a special water filtration system that strips down the minerals in Denver’s water and blends back in certain minerals, including calcium and magnesium, that mimic the water levels in New York.

“East Coast transplants have been our core clientele since the beginning,” Pollack said. “Traditionally speaking as a New York transplant myself, we are the hardest to please, so if you can please a New Yorker, then you’re doing a pretty good job.”

Pollack said he’s seen “minimal evolution” in Denver’s bagel scene up until recently. “There’s been an explosion post-pandemic, and these new shops, like Rich Spirit Bagels or Odell’s Bagel, are really doing justice to the food that is often not given, in my opinion, the respect and importance it deserves.”

Now that Denver’s leveled up its bagel game, check out the best six shops in town to get a proper bite of breakfast:

Rosenberg’s Bagels & Delicatessen

Pollack has his process down to a science. On top of using water filtered to his criteria — which affects the strength of the gluten — the shop cold ferments the dough overnight. The deli team also boils the bagel before they bake it and uses barley malt syrup for flavor development. The end result is a perfect chewy, crisp crust.

“Bagel making is an art and a science because it’s different every day,” Pollack said. “Seasonally, we’re adjusting the amount of water in our recipe. How long we mix, how long we boil, how long we prove is different day to day. That’s what excites me about baking in general.”

Rosenberg’s, with locations in Five Points, the Stanley Marketplace and a retail/wholesale operation dubbed Rosenberg’s Kosher, sells an assortment of bagels for $3 a pop ($18 for half a dozen or $30 for a dozen), ranging from plain to cinnamon raisin. The deli’s Five Points and Stanley Marketplace menus boast breakfast egg sandwiches, deli sandwiches and fish sandwiches with house-smoked sturgeon, Scottish smoked salmon, cured gravlax or whitefish salad.

Rosenberg’s Bagels & Deli: 725 E. 26th Ave., Denver; 2501 Dallas St., Aurora; rosenbergsbagels.com

Rosenberg’s Kosher: 942 S. Monaco Parkway, Denver; rosenbergskosher.com

Rich Spirit Bagels

Rich Spirit Bagels doesn’t want to be pigeonholed when it comes to style. Denver’s newest bagel shop, which opened in Gold’s Marketplace in March, takes techniques from around the world to create the perfect glutenous base.

Bakery Four brought its cult following from Tennyson Street over with it to Wheat Ridge, selling out of 300 bagels on its first day. Owner Shawn Bergin and his wife moved from New York to Denver in 2019, but never settled on a go-to spot.

Rich Spirit Bagels uses a dark malt in the bagel dough and boiling water to give it “a beer-like maltiness that’s really familiar in New York,” Bergin said. The bagels’ crisp exterior is reminiscent of Montreal-style bagels, which are typically sweeter and denser than New York bagels, and the dough is naturally leavened. There are no egg sandwiches but the plain, salted, poppyseed, salted sesame and everything bagels go for $2.50 a pop, $15 for half a dozen or $28 for a dozen.

10081 W. 26th Ave., Denver; richspiritbagels.com

Call Your Mother Deli

This wildly popular Washington, D.C.-based chain expanded to Denver last year with a debut shop on Tennyson Street, garnering lines so long that employees poured cups of coffee for people while they waited. Call Your Mother later added a second location in Capitol Hill and a third in Hilltop.

Dubbing itself a “Jew-ish” deli, Call Your Mother adds modern or non-traditional twists, enticing the most adventurous morning birds with flavors like za’atar or apple cinnamon and schmears that make you do a double take, including a Cheez-It, apple pie or candied salmon cream cheese.

The bagel recipe borrows from both New York and Montreal by boiling the bagel, adding honey in the dough for a bit of sweetness and baking it in a wood-fired oven. The chewy interior makes a perfect base for its famous bodega bagel sandwiches, like The Bacon Sun City ($10.50) with bacon, egg, cheese and spicy honey on an everything bagel. And for purists, bagels go for $2.50 a piece, $12 for six or $22 for 13.

3880 Tennyson St., Denver; 1291 Pearl St., Denver; and 217 S. Holly St., Denver; callyourmotherdeli.com/order#CO

Leroy’s Bagels

Leroy’s Bagels constantly struggles to keep up with demand, selling out of nearly 1,300 bagels every day in its current 840-square-foot space in the Sloan’s Lake neighborhood. Long lines full of families and people with dogs practically wrap around the corner on weekend mornings. Made fresh daily, the small shop boils and bakes 16 flavors of bagels, ranging from rosemary to spinach & parmesan. The chewy exterior and doughy, airy center don’t take away from whatever filling you’re craving for breakfast, whether you opt for a toasted base with bacon egg and cheese, or one of the deluxe cream cheese options, including tomato and basil or cucumber and dill.

Nearly everything on the menu, including the breakfast sandwiches, is under $10. Owner Sarah Green is currently working on opening a second location in LoHi this fall.

4432 W. 29th Ave., Denver; leroysbagels.com

WoodGrain Bagel & Deli

WoodGrain Bagel & Deli’s Montreal-style bagels are hand-rolled, boiled in honey water and baked in a wood-fired oven. Owner David Bowen, who moved here from Toronto, opened his first store in Boulder in 2017 before adding stores in Denver and Aurora.

“We bake the bagels with sundried oak at variable temperatures in altitude with a staff doing all this by hand,” he said. “No rollers, formers or anything mechanical except the mixer and boiler. I guess I picked the toughest way to do it, but it’s definitely been rewarding as a craft for us.”

You can taste the complexity of the sweetness against the wood-fired bake, and the bagels are best eaten fresh out of the oven (even without cream cheese). Or you can load them up with a breakfast or deli sandwich, like the house-cured pastrami Reuben and as an avocado toast base.

WoodGrain’s everything, plain, salt & pepper, pumpkin, blueberry, (etc.) bagels sell for $2.70 each (or $3.75 for a gluten-free option). Order half a dozen for $13 or a baker’s dozen (13) for $22.

7559 E. Academy Blvd., Denver; 13120 E. 19th Ave., Aurora; 2525 Arapahoe Ave., Boulder; woodgrainbagels.com