Best Bagels in Chicago: What to Look For, and Where

The best bagels in Chicago are the ones made the old New York way: rolled by hand, boiled in a kettle, baked in a deck oven and sold the same day. That process is what gives a bagel a shiny, crackly crust and a dense, chewy middle, and it’s how Gotham Bagels makes every bagel at its four Chicago shops in the Gold Coast, Lakeview, the South Loop and on the Magnificent Mile.

Chicago has plenty of round bread with a hole in it. Here’s how to tell the real thing, and where to find it in your neighborhood.

What makes a bagel one of the best?

Forget the hype for a second and look at the bagel itself. A great one passes four tests:

• The crust. It should be glossy and blistered, with a little crackle when you bite. A pale, soft, dull surface usually means the bagel was steamed instead of boiled.
• The chew. The inside should be dense and springy, not fluffy. You should have to commit to a bite.
• The shape. Hand-rolled bagels are a little irregular. A perfectly identical ring, every time, is usually a sign of a machine.
• The freshness. A bagel is at its peak the day it’s baked. If a shop isn’t baking daily, nothing else on this list matters much.

Why does boiling matter so much?

This is the step that separates a bagel from a roll. As NPR’s The Salt explains, boiling the shaped dough pre-gelatinizes the starch and thickens the crust, which a Culinary Institute of America chef calls essential for a chewy bagel. Many modern bakeries skip it and bake in a steam-injected oven instead, which only sets the surface and gives you a lighter, puffier bagel with a thinner crust.

The same piece takes on the famous excuse that you can’t get a good bagel outside New York because of the water. New York’s soft water does play a role, but a minor one. Technique does the heavy lifting, which is good news for Chicago.

At Gotham, every bagel is hand-rolled, kettle-boiled and baked in a rotating deck oven. Never steamed, never machine-rolled. We’ve been making them that way since 2006, when a New Yorker named Joe Gaglio opened the first Gotham in Madison because he couldn’t find a real bagel in the Midwest. You can read more about that in hand-rolled vs. machine-rolled bagels.

Is a New York bagel different from a Chicago bagel?

The bagel didn’t start in either city. Maria Balinska’s history The Bagel (Yale University Press) traces it from seventeenth-century Poland to the bakeries of New York’s Lower East Side, carried across the Atlantic by Eastern European Jewish immigrants. New York is where the boiled, hand-rolled style became the standard everyone else gets measured against.

So when people search for the best bagels in Chicago, they’re usually looking for that New York standard, here. That’s exactly what we brought when Gotham came to Chicago in 2020.

Where can I get New York bagels in Chicago?

We have four Chicago shops, and each one bakes fresh and takes carryout, online orders and catering.

Shop	Address	Hours	Good to know
Gold Coast	1212 N Dearborn St.	Daily 7 am – 2 pm	About 30 seats, a covered, heated patio, and loading zones out front for quick pickups
Lakeview	2801 N Lincoln Ave., Unit B	Daily 7 am – 2 pm	Big patio at Lincoln, Diversey and Racine; a weekend brunch favorite
South Loop	521 S Dearborn St.	Daily 7 am – 1 pm	In Printer’s Row near the Red and Blue Lines; café corner for laptops
Magnificent Mile	162 E Superior St., Unit B	Daily 6:30 am – 2 pm	Our earliest opening, half a block off Michigan Avenue

What should I order on my first visit?

Start simple so you can taste the bagel. A plain, sesame or everything with house-whipped cream cheese tells you everything about the crust and chew. Our Chicago bagel lineup runs from plain, poppy and salt to asiago, pumpernickel and cinnamon raisin, and the cream cheeses are whipped in house, including scallion, veggie and smoked salmon (plus vegan plain and vegan scallion).

Hungry? The Bacon, Egg & Cheddar is the one people come back for: thick-cut bacon, a fried egg and aged cheddar on a hand-rolled bagel. Lox lovers should go straight to the Brighton Beach, with cold-smoked salmon, cream cheese, heirloom tomato, red onion, arugula and capers. The whole lineup is on the Chicago & Lake Geneva menu.

Can I get the best bagels delivered or catered?

Yes, and this is where a good bagel really earns its keep. Order online from any of our Chicago shops for pickup or delivery; delivery reaches about four miles from each shop, which covers most of downtown and a good piece of the North Side. You can schedule orders up to 60 days ahead, and online ordering opens when the shop opens, so the bagels are ready when you walk in.

Feeding a group? Every bagel and deli platter comes with a NY Dozen®, a baker’s dozen of 13 bagels, and serves 13. The Sandwich Platter and the Bagel and Cream Cheese Platter each serve 9, wrapped and sliced in half so nobody needs a knife. Plan on one bagel or sandwich per person and three 8 oz containers of cream cheese per dozen; our how much to order guide does the math for you. For big orders, order at least a day ahead so we can bake for you. Everything else is on the Chicago catering page.

How do I keep bagels fresh at home?

Eat them the day you buy them if you can. If you bought extra, slice them and freeze them the same day. The University of Missouri Extension’s freezing guide puts baked bread and rolls at about three months in the freezer, and its Freezing Basics explains why the wrap matters: moisture loss causes freezer burn, and reused bread bags aren’t moisture-vapor-proof. Use a real freezer bag, squeeze out the air, and toast them straight from frozen. More tips in what’s up with frozen bagels.

So where’s the best bagel in Chicago?

Our honest answer: the closest one that was rolled by hand, boiled and baked this morning. If you’re in the Gold Coast, Lakeview, the South Loop or Streeterville, that’s us. Find your shop, order ahead for pickup or delivery, and grab a dozen while they’re still warm.