Brooklyn Bagel & Coffee Company
Ask for the mini bagel: Sietsema and Chaudhury put it at probably about the size a bagel was a century ago. Everything else in the case is the big modern kind. The business opened in 2002.
Why go
Robert Sietsema and Nadia Chaudhury call the standard bagels gigantic and airy. That is the same camp as Ess-a-Bagel and H&H, and Apollo Bagels and Popup Bagels bake the small tangy answer to it.3 The mini is the reason to come. Molly Fitzpatrick picked the house sandwich apart in March 2026, component by component: nova, scallion cream cheese, tomato, capers and red onion, well salted, every component in just the right proportion.
2 The other regular oddity is the rotating stunt bagel, gingerbread and seven-grain and sun-dried tomato among them.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the Bkbagel Classic on an everything bagel.2
- Order, for the oddities: the french toast bagel, which Fitzpatrick calls eggy and not too sweet, or the jalapeño asiago for the heat at the back.
- Avoid: treating one shop's bagel as the chain's. Four of the six doors are run by licensed operators.1
What locals & experts say
- Molly Fitzpatrick, The Infatuation, March 2026:
Brooklyn Bagel & Coffee Company has six locations, and not a single one is in Brooklyn. Ultimately, that is none of our business. But here's something that is: Their original Astoria shop serves soft, moist bagels that are some of the neighborhood's best.
2 - Sietsema and Chaudhury, Eater NY, March 2026: the Astoria shop
frequently boasts long lines for its gigantic, airy bagels. But the place also serves a mini-bagel, probably about the same size as bagels were a century ago.
3
Good to know
- The doors: Greenwich Village at 63 East 8th Street, Chelsea at 286 Eighth Avenue, three in Astoria at 35-09 Ditmars Boulevard, 3505 Broadway and 36-14 30th Avenue, and one up in Mamaroneck.1
- Booking: none.
Verdict
could-visit — Sietsema and Chaudhury supply the one genuinely scarce thing on this counter, a mini bagel, and they hedge the size claim themselves. Molly Fitzpatrick supplies the order that works whichever shop you reach, since she names every component of the house sandwich and the proportion it arrives in. The two published within three days of each other in March 2026 and printed different Astoria addresses, so neither one tells you which shop to walk to. Four of the six doors are run by licensed operators, so a good bagel at one is not a promise at the next.