Berkeley’s Boichik Bagels nears its opening
Stop your kvetching. Seriously, there are more important things going on in the world
than the dire lack of good bagels in the Bay Area. Plus, Emily Winston has taken care of that injustice.
Her labor of love, Boichik Bagels, which began as a pop-up in her Alameda apartment, is set to open this month as a brick-and-mortar bagel shop with schmears and smoked fish in the original Noah’s Bagels storefront on College Avenue near Alcatraz Avenue in Berkeley.
According to J Weekly, she even got the blessing of Noah Alper, creator of the original Noah’s, who sold the chain in 1996.
It’s an exciting, frenzied, carb-craving time, not just for Winston, who is opening her first business after two years and thousands of dollars in crowdfunding, but for her customers, who have been stalking the shop’s progress via social media and mailing list.
There, passion-filled comments range from the spiritual — “Emily! You are doing God’s work! The East Bay needs you and they need your bagels!” — to the desperate — “When, already? Can’t wait!!!” — and the good old-fashioned guiltridden: “Born in 1931. Desperately need a real bagel.”
Some of the same customers who two years ago stood in lines that stretched for blocks to get a nosh at her East Bay pop-ups came to her trial-bake at the shop on Halloween, where she held an impromptu bagel trick or treat.
Winston’s bagels are boiled, made from locally sourced organic unbleached high-protein wheat flour and cost $3 each.
East Coast transplant or not, you’ve likely heard of Winston’s inspiration, H&H Bagels, the New York gold standard, which shuttered its iconic location at Broadway and 80th Street in 2011 and sent many New Yorkers, including Winston, who grew up on the Upper West Side, into mourning. (H&H Bagels opened again in Manhattan, but as she insists on her website, “No, the shop by that name now is NOT the same.”)
But it also lit a fire, and sent her on a mission to re-create its chewy excellence. That’s a clue into what you’ll taste when Boichik Bagels opens at 3170 College Ave. Details: www. boichikbagels.com.