Bullfrog Bagels

Hand-rolled and boiled, the old-fashioned way

The bagels are rolled by hand and boiled before they are baked, which is the entire argument Bullfrog Bagels makes for itself. The brand started in 2014 and took its first permanent home in Washington, D.C. at Capitol Hill's Eastern Market, in a converted art studio inside a row house. That beginning reads more like a neighbourhood bakery than a breakfast chain, and it still shapes how the shops feel.

Production carries the rest of the story. At the Brookland kitchen the team ferments and rolls nearly all of the dough on site, hand-rolling thousands of bagels for the wider group of stores. From Capitol Hill the counters spread across the city into Brookland, Union Station, Foggy Bottom, Tenleytown and the Atlas District on H Street.

The same bagel in several rooms

The visit changes with the location, but the format does not: counter service, quick, bagel first. Capitol Hill has the most distinctive room, that former art studio in a row house, with a residential feel the other sites do not have. Brookland puts the counter inside a communal food hall, and the H Street site sits in a shared dining environment with a weekend brunch menu of its own.

Union Station is built around pickup, which suits people passing through, and the Tenleytown and H Street trucks turn the same bagels into street food. Across all of them the through-line is fast service and bagels baked in batches through the morning rather than held over from the day before.

Order a bagel with schmear, then a bagelwich

A bagel with schmear is the honest first order, because it puts the hand-rolled, boiled dough in front of you with nothing to hide behind. Chew and crust are the whole test, and a plain bagel either passes it or does not.

For a full meal the menu runs to eighteen signature bagelwiches, from egg-and-cheese breakfast builds to larger lunch sandwiches. The anchors are house-smoked salmon, a Reuben, a BLT, and the Oriole, which is built on Baltimore braised brisket. The salmon is the one that shows kitchen work rather than assembly, and the Oriole is the regional joke worth getting. At weekends the H Street counter adds brunch alongside the standard menu, which is as far as Bullfrog strays from the bagel. Everything still starts with the same dough.