Chicago is Making a Play for Bagel Supremacy, As Two More Spots Open Brick-and-Mortar Locations

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New Yorkers have a tendency to disdain Chicago (see our “Second City” nickname and smirking reactions to our deep dish pizza), and they might soon have a new target for their insecurity – because Chicago is making a play for bagel supremacy.

While exceptional bagels were once rare in Chicago, a recent batch of new spots has risen recently, many leavened by the free time to experiment granted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Some fine-tune the classic bagel of Jewish delis; others aren’t your bubbe’s bagel, using sourdough and incorporating inventive flavors into their doughy goodness.

Two purveyors exemplifying both of those approaches are opening brick-and-mortar locations on back-to-back days at the beginning of November, further cementing Chicago’s bagel boom.

Zeitlin's Delicatessen

Sam Zeitlin first made bagels for sale in 2019, then devoted his attention full-time to perfecting a traditional bagel after being laid off from his restaurant job during the pandemic. Now, after years of selling at farmers markets, online, and out of a stall – which opened in 2024 – at the Old Post Office food hall From Here On, Zeitlin’s Delicatessen is debuting its first standalone deli in Lincoln Park at 2203 N. Clybourn Ave. The flagship space is located next door to a Chicago icon of dough, Pequod’s Pizza, on the same block as another newcomer that has drawn crowds, the Keralite Indian restaurant Trilokah. It’s open with a limited menu starting October 31, with a grand opening on November 4. 

The Zeitlin’s storefront will be a full-on deli, with an expanded menu of sandwiches, soups, salads, sweet baked goods, and, of course, bagels. In addition to egg-and-cheese and lox bagels, there are sandwiches with whitefish, tuna, or egg salad on challah and a reuben with housemade turkey, pastrami, or corned beef. Babkas, knishes, and black and white cookies sit alongside crumb cakes, muffins, and stuffed challahs. You can get matzo ball soup and potato salad, but also a less conventional pizza bagel, smash burger on a challah bun, and a Chicago-style hot dog stuffed inside an everything bagel. 

Zeitlin’s production for its other businesses will all move to the Lincoln Park location, according to Andres Zapata, the business manager. “Everything is fresh-baked,” he says. 

With Zeitlin’s roots in the pandemic, Zapata says Sam and his brother and business partner Hal “saw this trend coming.”

Rosca

Felix Zepeda also started experimenting with bagel recipes during the pandemic, but he only started selling them under the name Rosca (Spanish for bagel) this year. “Everybody had all that time to reflect,” he says of the pandemic. “I got into sourdough bagels and just dove all the way in.”

A native of Pilsen, he wanted to celebrate his Mexican heritage in his bagels, incorporating ingredients like dried mango, spicy-tangy Tajín, richly sweet piloncillo, and pepitas into one, sesame and complex red mole in another, and Mexican spices like cumin and chile ancho into a take on an everything bagel. He started selling them earlier this year at farmers markets and out of a panadería in Pilsen, and is now opening a café in the neighborhood at 1857 W. 16th St..

The location is inside a former warehouse turned into an event space and production facility earlier this year by Hoste, a Chicago-based cocktail company that is a sister to Apologue, which makes liqueurs with Midwestern ingredients.

“Ever since I’ve been around the area, I’ve only known that it was just a closed-down warehouse,” Zepeda says. He loves seeing the space transformed into Hoste. “Realizing that that place exists in my neighborhood of all places – it’s like a little hidden gem.” 

The Rosca café opens on November 5, and will offer coffee and aguas fresca, with sandwiches and more to eventually debut. Zepeda has ambitious ideas, like egg-and-cheeses featuring chorizo or turkey mole, the hearty, warming masa-based Mexican beverages known as atole, and coffee pairings with individual bagels. He’s having coffee beans roasted to order at collaborative roastery Tailwind, sourcing beans ethically and sustainably from Oaxaca.

He is already intentional in his sourcing for his bagels, buying wheat berries and milling them into flour himself for his bagels. “We do everything from scratch,” he says. “We want to get down to the bare bones.” 

Chicago's Bagel Boom

Rosca and Zeitlin’s are just two of the many bagel businesses that have recently cropped up in Chicago. Several make sourdough bagels like Zepeda: Tilly’s Bagels, which opened a second shop in the West Loop this year; the Lettuce Entertain You pop-up Decker’s, which started this year; Dorothy’s, which opened a Lincoln Park location in September; and Beachwater Bagels, an extension of the pizza and bread program at Middle Brow that started popping up on Saturdays earlier this year. 

There’s Montreal-style bagels (hand-rolled, kettle-boiled, and baked in a wood-burning oven) at Lefty’s Righteous Bagels in Evanston. Holy Bagels, Call Your Mother, and H&H Bagels are all shops in other cities that have opened or are opening outposts in Chicago. Schneider Deli, Mensch’s in Evanston and Glencoe, and Steingold’s (an OG of the Jewish deli/bagel scene, having opened before the pandemic) all recreate the Jewish deli in the mode of Zeitlin’s and offer bagels, although not made in-house. 

So next time you hear someone lament the lack of worthwhile bagels in Chicago, you have a long list to show them – especially if they’re a New Yorker.