Schlok's Bagels & Lox
Zack Schwab and the chef James Lok sell a bagel twice the size of most in this city. There is a heavy dose of barley malt syrup in it. Lok cooked at Benu and the Restaurant at Meadowood. They cure and smoke their own salmon over cherrywood, and slice it each morning. The counter is a salmon-pink takeout window on Fell Street.
Why go
They publish the method: Our bagels are cold-proofed overnight, then boiled and baked on burlap-lined wooden boards in a revolving tray oven. They are dense but soft. They are chewy but with a slightly crunchy crust.
5 Dianne de Guzman adds that they roll them by hand.3
This shop came out of the argument San Francisco had with New York in March 2021. The Times ran a piece calling California bagels better. The Chronicle answered with thirteen of them a week later. Schlok's was a Pacific Heights pop-up then, working weekends out of the Snug. It sold more than 400 bagels in three minutes. Schwab and Lok told the paper they took their cues from New York and considered the result distinctively San Franciscan.2
Janelle Bitker credits Michelle Polzine of 20th Century Cafe as one of the first in the city to serve crusty sourdough bagels. The chef-run pop-ups followed her.6
Order this / avoid
- Order: half a dozen loose bagels, scallion schmear and the house-cured lox. Julia Chen says the schmears go on layered across the top like sprinkles on a cake instead of mixed in.1
- Order: the breakfast sandwich, with smoked ham added for $2 as of February 2024.
- Order: the smoked ends sandwich, chopped smoked lox with blackened everything spice and scallion schmear.3
- Avoid: the veggie sandwich. Chen calls it the most skippable of the three and a little dry.
What locals & experts say
- Julia Chen, The Infatuation, February 2024, rating it 7.9:
The bagels are always chewy and soft on the inside, and have a gorgeous bottom crust that crunches loud enough to hear from the Panhandle.
1 - Janelle Bitker, Soleil Ho and Serena Dai, San Francisco Chronicle, March 2021, carried Schlok's among thirteen Bay Area bagels and reported the barley malt and the size.2
Good to know
- Getting in: a takeout window, no bookings. Pre-order online or on their app.
- Where: 1263 Fell Street, in NoPa, on the edge of the Panhandle.
- Doors: the shop refers to more than one counter and publishes no list of them, so I can only vouch for this address.
- Coffee: Saint Frank.
Verdict
should-visit — Go in the morning.