Los Feliz and East Hollywood can rejoice: a new bagel shop recently opened on Hollywood Boulevard.
While Boichik Bagels is new to Los Angeles, it is a small chain that originated in the Bay Area. Founder Emily Winston grew up in New Jersey and would savor the bagels from H&H on New York’s Upper West Side, which several generations of New Yorkers considered the gold standard for bagels. After H&H was shut down for tax fraud in the 2010s, accompanied by Winston’s relocation to Berkeley, CA, she turned her grief for those classic Jewish rolls into a baking project that led to successful pop-ups, then a bagel factory in Berkeley and several stores across the Bay Area.
The small and quaint storefront on Hollywood Boulevard that sits at the gateways of Los Feliz and East Hollywood is the perfect spot to grab some bagels on the go, or sit for a spell with a fresh bagel and some coffee before cruising vintage shops in nearby Silverlake. A small selection of dips, spreads, and salads are on the menu, harkening back to Jewish delis of olde. New Yorkers and New Jerseyans born before 1990 will appreciate the no-nonsense list of drinks: there are no laundry lists of how you can order coffee, making it feel more like the small neighborhood bagel shops that once proliferated Brooklyn and the Lower East Side, rather than the fancy coffee shops that replaced them over waves of gentrification.
As LA Digs’ resident Bronx Jewish transplant, I must report that a classic plain bagel with cream cheese is indeed very close to the real deal from the homeland. The bagels got just the right amount of chewiness and will make an excellent breakfast for northeasterners who feel homesick. You can also take bagels and bialys (a flatter Eastern European Jewish roll with “onion snot” in the center, as my zaidy referred to it) home fresh or from their small freezer, and Boichik Bagels ships nationwide if you’re just never going to make it to Hollywood Boulevard that early in the morning.
Boichik Bagels is located on 4655 Hollywood Boulevard and is open 7:30AM-2PM daily.
