Chapter 10: Born and bread

Schreiber said it started when Beauty’s, at the forefront of the Bagel Renaissance, cried out, “Hey! We are young cooks, we care about this food, we want to do our own little spin on it.” He spent a week in Oakland with the shop’s owners, Blake Joffe and Amy Remsen, to learn their process and scaling methods. While he and Belle’s co-founder, J.D. Rocchio, were still new to the game, their initial challenge was navigating the pop-up landscape before pop-ups really existed. They had to rent out kitchens from restaurants while they weren’t in use, causing Schreiber to stand at the oven from 11 p.m. to 2 a.m. to make sure he was out of there before the dining room opened. But through this adversity, Schreiber said Belle’s was one of the first businesses to be part of the Bagel Renaissance in LA, sparking a future third wave of bagel culture — while people like him and Jason Kaplan at Maury’s Bagels were a part of the second wave.

Growing up in California is not like growing up in New York or Chicago; New York and Chicago are relative constants as far as bagels are concerned, an atmosphere against which one measures one’s own changing palate. All that is constant about the California of Schreiber’s childhood is the rate at which it disappears; a decay marked by the loss of I & Joy Bagels. A born and “bread” Jewish Angeleno, he remarks how every occasion was dusted in everything bagel seasoning. For Schreiber, the bagels his dad would pick up from I & Joy created a sense memory of the delicacy as a blistered, crisp crust in a delicious, texturally contrasted conversation with a doughy interior. But when it was acquired by Manhattan Bagel Co. in 1995, Schreiber could no longer enjoy the food that defined his upbringing. So one morning in 2012, Schreiber and Belle’s co-owner, J.D. Rocchio, noticed a hole amidst the swaths of LA’s terraformed desert and decided to make the bagels they wanted to find in the city, a bagel that acknowledged what it’s like to grow up Jewish.

Author’s Note: In the interview, Schreiber made a point to spell out “born and B-R-E-A-D” to emphasize how serious he is about bagels.

To sum up their approach to the deli business, Schreiber jokes that they, “make the food that your grandma would make if she had a septum and piercing in a full sleeve of tattoos.” While it’s still Jewish comfort food, they provide their own new-ish twists atop their double-fermented bagels to bring classic Jewish cooking to the modern palate. Having had their gravlax bagel, I taste exactly what Schreiber and Rocchio are going for. Their bagels had that New York density and bite, but the Golden Coast’s flair from a bump of preserved lemon, pickled onions and locally cured lox. Schreiber also catered the menu to his vegetarian and vegan friends through the addition of cherrywood beets, a beet that’s been smoked over cherrywood and mixed in a briny liquid of tamari and olive oil, lemon juice, dill, salt and pepper, to create a substitute for smoked salmon. Schreiber even finds himself gravitating towards the beets more than the lox because he finds they are everything he loves about smoked fish, just with beets, and “what little Jewish boy doesn’t like that,” Schreiber remarked.  

And as if overnight, Belle’s inspired contemporaries such as Kyle Glanville of Mustard’s Bagels; who now slings and slices what some consider to be the best bagels in Culver City. Then, not long after, Los Angeles’ deepest image of itself emerged and the city was burning with a fervor for boiled bread; for the Bagel Renaissance had begun. But over those now 14 years, the game has changed, son of Flynn, as the rise of the aforementioned aesthetic bagels has shifted the grid from these humble rolls Schreiber would describe as a soul-nourishing food he can afford to eat every day, into a snobbish subculture, dedicated to doing things the “correct” way. For Schreiber, while he views trends like aesthetic bagels as the next generation of the sandwich with its veg-heavy emphasis, acid-forward, loaded with herbs and packed with textual contrast, they are not his everyday bagel; though he acknowledges they are hitting a specific part of the culture.  

In my view, there is no better example of this snobbish obsession than with the toasted-non-toasted debate. Schreiber likes his bagels simple; sesame with just a light amount of cream cheese, capers, lox and red onions, and goes back and forth on whether he wants it toasted or not. A fresh bagel does not need to be toasted because it loses the beautiful nuance of freshly baked bread, granted, he understands it’s a tradeoff of personal taste — a pretty liberal viewpoint in the bagel world, I assure you. But it’s one that only exists because of Bagel and Lox Jewishness. 

Go to Russ & Daughters, an institutional bagel constant. They will not give you the option to toast your sandwich, they might actually laugh at you if you inquire. But this option wouldn’t make sense if you think about it. Daughters has been open since 1914, just five years before the toaster was patented for restaurant usage. So for decades upon centuries, dating back to the Old Country from which every-thing bagel got its roll on, they were served untoasted. Flash forward to when the Lenders stocked freezer shelves with their product, toaster technology was fully fleshed out and a common kitchen appliance. The Lenders even advertised their bagels as Jewish English muffins; “an English muffin with personality,” they said. So, through the equation of the bagel with other commonly toasted bread products, it only makes sense this Jewish carb would eventually go “bloop” alongside our Eggo Waffles and Pop-Tarts. Heck! Most toasters even have a bagel function nowadays to only toast the cut side of the bread. Bagel and Lox Jewishness has had such an impact on the culture, it has changed the way everyone eats these breakfast rolls by starting the conversation of “toasted or non-toasted?” This is but one example as to the impact of this sect of the faith, and one not lost on Schreiber: 

“I’ve definitely heard the term Bagel and Lox Jews, I’ve probably been called it a few times in my life. The great thing about being Jewish is our diaspora, right? Jews are a diasporadic people, we’re from… all different parts of the world and the food we love has been inspired by many other cultures and as much as I love to see that food and eat that food, it’s also important that our food inspire other cultures too. So, to me, I love seeing bagels and lox becoming this kind of more cultural mainstay for the population.” – Schreiber