Old Brooklyn Bagels & Deli

Love the big windows, corner location and wood tables at Old Brooklyn Bagels. The bagels are OK and I love the garlic herb cream cheese.
It was a sad awakening to discover they no longer have Mr. Espresso drip coffee which was fulfillingly strong and dark. Now they have a weaker lighter roast from another company.
Luckily there are other cafes with McLaughlin’s (dark roast coffee) and other coffee roasters nearby with great bagels to tide me over. Or I could just stop eating bagels. Nah.

Really good basic bagel and cream cheese. I always get the salt bagel and I love it. I could easily eat two or three at a time but I won’t. The service has always been pretty bad but I run a small business and understand how hard it is to find good help. I also think the building this place is located in is really cool.

When Old Brooklyn Bagels & Deli opened a few years ago, it was good. Now, the food is mediocre and the staff and service are too.

Insanely overpriced, bagels are OK, but I’ve had better.
The Works — Bagel, Lox, Veggie, Cream Cheese is $ 10
Latte — $ 4
^^both of those prices are v high, but forgivable if the service/​environment is awesome, which it is not.
No non-​dairy anything knocks off another star.

Dude, I don’t know what these low reviews are all about, cause this place is the best. I ave been coming here almost weekly for over an year and I’ve never had a problem. The staff are very sweet, and the bagels are amazing! I am originally from New York, and had a hard time finding edible bagels when I first arrived here. That all changed when I found this place!

This business has great bagels, but their staff is so rude and so truly mediocre at relating to customers that its painful to shop here. They charge separately for freezer bags, and have no warmth or friendliness to muster, whatsoever. Honestly, as often as I can I shop elsewhere for bagels. If you dont want to be in a business that interacts with the public, then change jobs. My dad used to whisper quietly to us, when he visited a business like this, «this would be a great place to start a restaurant.» And when I shop at Brooklyn Bagels I think, «this would be a great place to start a bagel shop.»

I had a few seconds of buyers remorse when the bagel sandwich I ordered got to my table. Fortunately it was completely unfounded. It was simple but really really good. The iced coffee drink was also outstanding. Fast service, good menu options, clean bathroom with that squirt soap that smells so god damn good

Check your order. 90% of the time they put the wrong cream cheese on. Make sure they actually toast the bagel, not just perfunctorily pass it through the machine. Avoid the orange juice. It’s squeezed but not fresh. Sheesh I’m getting frustrated. I hear Whole Foods has a better Asiago bagel. I’ll check that out.

I love their chai latte. Nice and spicy but not over done like other places! Plus outdoor seating makes it even nicer. 5 stars!

Hey, remember when a New York Minute became a thing in 1989? Well neither do the people who run this shop. Order today and you may see get some mediocre toasted bread in 2025.

Came here about a year and a half ago, and had a wonderful and massive sandwich. In the past 6 months I’ve come again twice; disappointed both times. Prices high, quantity low, quality moderate.

Average bagels for a decent price. I ordered the blueberry bagel and it tasted very garlicy (it was probably next to the garlic bagel) which wasn’t a good mix together. A lot of open space to study though.

Not quite Terrace Bagels but great for the Bay Area. Go for the Montclair on an everything, of course.

It’s a decent bagel, but if you’re drawn here thinking you’re getting a New York bagel, alas, your quest to find it in the Bay Area will have to continue. Consistency of the bagel is good (a bit on the dense side but it’s got the highly-​sought after crisp exterior) but suffers from the same mistakes that are common in these here parts:
1) Not salty enough (although most food here isn’t!)
2) Not enough cream cheese (seriously, if it’s not oozing out the sides and hole and making a mess of your fingers, it’s not NYC)
3) No scallion cream cheese (why everyone around here makes chive cream cheese is so freakin beyond me. It’s not like there’s a dearth of scallions! Blarg.)
The atmosphere of this place is really nice — open, sunny, lots of seating. Coffee was decent.

Since it seems like you need to establish your credentials first to criticize bagels, I recently moved back from NY, where I spent 4 years eating Absolute Bagels about 2x per week. Like any good bagel snob, I do not toast my bagels. I’ve had many bagels across NY and Brooklyn, and some exposure to NJ bagelry. Also have some experience making bagels at home, since (almost) nothing in the Bay Area comes close.
Like many others, I was attracted to the «Brooklyn» part of their name when I first saw the shop. The bagel is a bit small, but once could argue that it harks back to when bagel shops were unionized and bagels weren’t overinflated pieces of dough (which are awesome when you’re trying to get full). In terms of texture and crunch though, its one of the best bagels I’ve had in the South or East Bay. Unfortunately, the cream cheese is disappointing compared to the bagel, and thus the loss of one star.
I would recommend buying two everything bagels without cream cheese, and then just using your favorite store-​bought or local shop’s cream cheese.

When the sign came up about a new bagel place on College, I got pretty excited. Sadly, it’s totally sub-​par. I’ve had the displeasure of having bagels from here a couple of times but figured that I was being a snob about it. Nope. It’s just bad.
Their coffee is undrinkable – it tastes completely burnt.
Their cream cheese tastes like no-​name cheap-​stuff and not like no-​name-​extra-​delicious-​stuff that you expect bagel places to have.
There was onion infecting my sesame seed bagel today and now all I have in my mouth is the disgusting aftertaste of burnt onion.
The bagel texture is wrong wrong wrong. That is _​not_​a bagel. It is a bagel-​shaped roll.
Plus the service isn’t even nice, and the bathroom is filthy. When a bathroom is dirty, I presume the kitchen is worse.

If I could put Zero stars I would.
Lets me start off by saying I am an East coast transplant and i lived in New York and Philidelphia for half my life. That being said a thick Bagel with half a lb of crème cheese is a slice of heaven for me.
This place is a disgrace.
I Saw the association with Brooklyn and i thought i would try it out. Noah’s New York Bagel is the furthest thing from a New York Bagel so I didn’t think this place could be much worse… I was wrong.
First thing i saw was how the bagels were about an inch and a half thick. Then there was a Two Inch hole in the middle of this so called bagel… I decided to go with a breakfast sandwich.
I do not eat eggs so I asked how much it would be for just a bacon Lettuce and cheese. The woman said it would be the same price as the Bacon Egg and cheese which was almost $ 7…I was so hungry I said ok and I thought they better be generous with that bacon… I even Looked the woman in the eyes and Dropped a dollar in the tip jar, trying to give her the signal to hook it up with Bacon…
I get my sandwich and I take a bite and I do not taste any bacon. I open it up and there are two measly pieces of what looks like oscar meyer microwaveable ready to eat bacon strips… sweeeeeeet. fuck you

Being that I spent 13 years in Jersey before coming back to the bay area, three stars is a pretty good rating from me as I am thusly a bit of a bagel snob. These are pretty good, and they blow away Noah’s for sure (Noah’s bagels are donuts without the frosting in my opinion).
They have a good selection of schmears and a nice sandwich menu as well. Fresh squeezed orange juice is also a nice touch.
Owners should update their website to reflect the current menu as they do not currently offer the breakfast options listed.

We hadn’t been here since they first opened. I remember liking their bagels but hadn’t made a return trip since the difficulty in parking in this neck of the woods.
We stopped by on a recent trip to Kaiser Oakland. I had the veggie bagel – a toasted bagel with cream cheese, cucumbers and sprouts. I chose the garlic bagel which may not have been the best choice to eat before a doctor’s appointment.
Son is a purist – he had a toasted plain bagel with cream cheese.
We also got a half dozen bagels to go.
We enjoyed all the bagels immensely.
They are made the traditional way, boiled then baked.
So nice to rediscover this place since Noah’s Bagels have declined over the years – soft and smoothy with no flavor.
Staff is friendly.

Did you know Brooklyn was once a part of Oakland?
I didn’t until I saw the large black & white map on the front of their counter area. their naming strategy for the «East Coast meets West Coast fusion» deli makes more sense to me.
I had the Kensington (aka Reuben) which comes with 2 small pickle spears ($ 9.95
). The corned beef tasted griddled and somewhat greasy (similar to Wood Tavern’s pastrami). OK amount of meat in the middle which dropped off to nothing on the sides where I left some uneaten bread from both sides in the basket (
). The pickle spears were very good (made in-​house?).
Overall, seemed skimpy for $ 10 with no sides except the pickles.
I liked the Everything bagel I tried better than the sandwich. «Everything» here means sesame, poppy, and sunflower seeds. Nice chewy, crisp crust (un-​toasted). Inside not quite as chewy, perhaps by design with the East /​West fusion thing.
Sandwich — 3 stars
Bagel — 4 stars
Rounding down for sandwich value. Toss in a scoop of potato salad or a small side salad and some more meat.