Lots to love about this lox

Made in-house, bagels, bread the right start

Walking into Chicago Bagel & Deli, I was suddenly back in college, the smell of freshly baked bread and the sight of bins full of bagels bringing me back to a time in my life when, every single day, I would stop by my local shop, fill my mug with coffee and order a freshly toasted everything bagel with salmon cream cheese.

Even with the rosy hue of nostalgia, those college bagels pale in comparison to Chicago Bagel & Deli’s, a carryout-only shop where those rings of dough come with a perfectly crisp outside shielding the soft, fresh bread inside.

Chicago Bagel & Deli proudly boasts that it’s been around since 1995 on Wurzbach Road near Vance Jackson. The store makes all of its own breads and water-boiled bagels starting at 3 a.m.

There are more than 20 sandwiches to choose from, and all come with choice of bagel or bread, with options that include white, wheat, rye, French bread or croissant. You also get a nice chilled pickle spear and choice of potato salad, pasta salad, coleslaw or chips on the side.

Best sandwich: Of course I picked an everything bagel as the base for the lox sandwich ($10.35), a generous portion of lox tucked into a bagel bedecked by a nuclear explosion of seasonings and seeds.

The salmon was rich and smooth with a nice, briny bite complemented by silky cream cheese, a thick slice of tomato, red onions and a handful of capers. There was a lot going in the best of ways.

Other sandwiches: On the more traditional sandwich front, the pastrami on rye ($11.35) was simple and straightforward. The bread was toasted to a golden buttery crust that crunched like a potato chip and housed a quarter-pound of that beautiful cured beef topped with spicy mustard.

The triple-decker club sandwich is another definitive deli staple, and the City Hall Club ($10.20) boldly held it’s own. A stack of ham, turkey, bacon, American cheese and tomato on wheat bread with just the right amount of mayo held together for some heavenly bites.

I was not a fan of the whitefish salad sandwich ($8.85), however, which I opted to get on a croissant. Whitefish is a staple in traditional bagel shops and delicatessens. It’s a strong fish, and I like that. But this salad mixture was off and smelled like a wet sock that was placed in a microwave.

Photos by Chuck Blount / Staff The rich, smooth, briny salmon in the lox that tops an everything bagel is complemented by silky cream cheese, tomato, red onions and capers in this busy-in-a-good-way sandwich.

A quarterpound of pastrami topped with spicy mustard is enveloped in buttery toasted bread.