SEATTLE’S MOST FAMOUS BAGEL MAKER IS SETTING UP A NEW SHOP

Andrew Rubinstein is coming back to Seattle. Last week the bagel maker best known for founding Rubinstein Bagels — and then walking away from it — announced that he’d signed a lease for a new bagel shop in University Village, which is bound to become one of the hottest destinations for Seattle’s many gluten fans.

It’s a little surprising that Hey Bagel, Rubinstein’s new venture, is coming west of Lake Washington. Last year he sold his stake in his namesake shop Rubinstein Bagels to restaurateur Ethan Stowell, who had been a partner in the business. He told Eater Seattle that the move was made in part because he preferred actually making bagels to managing 40 employees and three shop locations, and in part because he wanted to work closer to where he lived in Sammamish.

He’s spent the last several months tinkering with his bagel recipe and selling the results at crowded popups or clandestine parking lot meetups, or simply leaving them in mailboxes. Hey Bagel’s bagels tend to be craggier, with more blisters, than the ones at Rubinstein Bagels; the bagel maker is now baking his bagels at a higher temperature, leading to a crispier crust. The results have been widely praised, with bagel critic Sean Keeley calling them “some of the best bagels I’ve ever eaten.”

But when Eater Seattle last checked in with Rubinstein, he was leaning toward opening a brick-and-mortar somewhere on the Eastside to reduce his commute and improve his work-life balance. So how’d he end up at U Village? The rents were too high out east, he tells Eater Seattle, and the foot traffic was too low. “When U Village approached me, it really was a no brainer,” he said in an email. “My kids used to trick or treat there when they were little. But outside of the emotional decision, it’s got all that I want. Heavy foot traffic. A destination shopping center. Plenty of parking. All of that adds to an equation allowing us to produce and serve hot bagels all day long.”

The hot bagel point is key. Any aficionado will tell you that the ideal way to enjoy a bagel is warm out of the oven — it shouldn’t need to be toasted in order to bring it back to life. The problem for Rubinstein (and other Seattle-area bagel producers) is that bagel shops around here don’t tend to get enough consistent customers throughout the day to justify continuously baking bagels. As a result, by the early afternoon there are no fresh bagels to be had. But in U Village, maybe Rubinstein can get closer to his dream of having a shop that doesn’t even have a toaster.

This time around, Rubinstein says he wants to keep things “simpler” and not do as many sandwiches as Rubinstein Bagels offers. Those sandwiches, he says, “added a greater complexity to the business” and made it tougher on staff during rushes. At the new Hey Bagel it’ll be all about the bagels and shmears. “I’ll have a cream cheese bar. Think like an ice cream counter. A glass case showing off a bunch of standards, but also some fun and surprising flavors,” he says. He also plans to sell bialys — a rarity in Seattle — and partner with Anchorhead Coffee for drinks.

There’s no set opening date for the new shop, but it should arrive sometime this fall. “I feel lucky to have this opportunity,” Rubinstein says. “I love the feeling of making people happy, and I cannot wait to do it this fall taking it to the next level.”

2024-04-29T14:08:46Z dg43tfdfdgfd