Boichik Bagels to open in Larkspur
Boichik Bagels, Berkeley-based purveyor of a traditional malty sweet New York-style staple, will open its first Marin County store next month in Larkspur.
Owner Emily Winston told the Chronicle on Sunday that the outpost will open in early November on Magnolia Avenue, Larkspur’s main strip, in a space formerly occupied by Urban Remedy that is next to Equator Coffees. The bagels will be baked at the home factory on Sixth Street in West Berkeley and delivered fresh each morning in time for the shop’s 7 a.m. opening, seven days a week.
“We have a lot of fans up in Marin who have been begging, begging, begging for a shop there, and we are excited to make them very happy,” said Winston, 45, who grew up in central New Jersey and claims “to know what a bagel should taste like.”
“It should have a particular taste, a particular chew and a particular crust,” she said. “It should not be just a round piece of bread.”
Winston, whose family name was changed from Weinstein when the family emigrated from Ukraine in the 1920s, is self-taught in the art, having moved to Alameda in 2010.
“I was living here and bemoaning the lack of good bagels as most East Coasters do,” she said, “so I made it my quest to re-create it for myself.”
Winston opened her first shop in the former site of the original Noah’s Bagels, at the corner of College Avenue and Alcatraz, and named the store for the Yiddish word for “cute little boy.” She now operates a shop at her factory and in Town & Country Village, a shopping center in Palo Alto, with a fourth shop, in Santa Clara, also slated to open in November.
She bakes 7,000 bagels a day, in 15 flavors, and expects to boost that to 10,000 when the two new shops open. She is not stopping there.
“My goal is to take over the world with good bagels,” she said.