Odell’s Bagels opening soon in Denver

After hand-rolling 20,000 bagels over the past year, you’d think Miles Odell would be absolutely sick of them. But when you watch him reverently select one, slice it, and use the inside surface like a plate to present his intricate flavor combinations, it’s clear that the opposite is true.

Odell loves bagels the way that only someone who grew up in New Jersey can. Because even while he attended culinary school in New York and then traveled to Kyoto, Japan, to cook in Michelin-starred restaurants as part of a three-year culinary outreach program, he was teaching himself how to make bagels — like a hobby — working on his technique, perfecting a recipe.

“Learning to hand-roll each one into a circular shape” — that has been the hardest part of that experience, he explained recently. “I’ll never stop learning about bagels.”

Odell will share the results of that education with the rest of Denver as he opens Odell’s Bagels in the former Denver Bread Company building at 3200 Irving St.; the store is taking pre-orders on specific days and will add more days shortly.

He’ll also set a new standard in Denver’s bagel culture, which has been leavening over the past two years with the arrival of the Call Your Mother bagel chain and the recent or impending expansion of local options like Rosenberg’s, Leroy’s Bagels, Rich Spirit and Moe’s.

The brightly lit shop — boasting a long wooden counter and tightly drawn murals with bagel artwork — will sell classics like sesame, poppyseed, everything and pumpernickel as well as rosemary, brown sugar cinnamon and furikake, a seaweed-based Japanese seasoning blend. Each is hand-rolled and made from one of three different freshly milled local flours.

Related: 6 of the best bagel shops around Denver

But it’s in the sandwiches where the chef’s kitchen experience will shine. The menu will start with lox and cream cheese — but not just any lox. Odell is working with a smokehouse in upstate New York for the Nova and Pastrami-seasoned fish, and plans to slice it by hand, rather than with a machine, using the careful technique he learned while working with sushi in Japan.

There also will be bagels with koji-cured beef pastrami, sablefish, egg and cheese, and rotating fruits and vegetables, depending on what’s in season. Odell’s will open with an heirloom tomato sandwich, for instance, prepared with salsa macha, chives and chile crisp. But that item might disappear in the winter. “I don’t like a refrigerated tomato. I only like them in season,” he said.