PopUp Bagels opened a new location in Lincoln Park Friday — its first location in the Midwest. While we had a blast trying all the menu’s items, there were some holes in the experience.
Founded in 2020 in Westport, Connecticut, PopUp Bagels operates with a simple menu, offering five bagel flavors, three permanent schmears and two limited edition schmears that rotate weekly. This week’s specialty flavors were the cake batter cream cheese and the vanilla berry butter.
Its motto, “Not famous but known,” has become questionable in recent years, as the chain has gone viral on social media.
We waited in line for 45 minutes to enter the storefront, which features Chicago-themed decor, a mirror for customer selfies and pictures of celebrities from Adam Sandler to Donald Glover posing with PopUp Bagels products.
Bagels are made fresh every five minutes and sold by the bag, requiring customers to purchase a minimum of three bagels and one schmear for $15, so we recommend going with a group. We bought five bagels and two schmears for $27.66, including tax and a 10% tip, and were given an extra bagel for free. Perhaps listing our order name as Willie — in honor of our mascot — gave us street cred with the PopUp Bagels staff.
PopUp Bagels encourages customers to “grip, rip and dip” their bagels and schmear, a technique that walks the line of useful and (cream)-cheesy. Though not all of the bagels were easy to rip, doing so allowed us to mix and match the sweet and savory spreads.
The everything bagel was our favorite of the bunch. Sprinkled with seasoning on the outside and fluffy and warm on the inside, it was the perfect blend of chewy and tough. Paired with scallion cream cheese, it was an exquisite bite.
While the scallion cream cheese complemented the everything bagel wonderfully, its flavor was a little muted. We would have welcomed more scallions.
The poppyseed bagel was our least favorite flavor. Like the everything bagel, it didn’t skimp out on the seasoning. In this case, however, the amount of poppyseeds was overwhelming and made the bagel less enjoyable to eat. We tried pairing it with both schmears and recommend eating it with scallion cream cheese rather than a sweet option.
The sesame bagel is a must-have for sesame lovers. Its exterior was soft, warm and coated with seeds, and biting into it felt similar to eating a sesame ball. Even though its texture was reminiscent of a sweet sesame treat, we preferred pairing it with the savory schmear.
The plain bagel certainly lived up to its name; we preferred the salt bagel as a simple option. It created a satisfying salty-sweet combination when dipped in the cake batter cream cheese.
The cream cheese’s sweet flavor is unidentifiable at first, but once the cake batter flavor hits, it packs a powerful punch. It was almost impossible to stop eating, and we took the leftover cream cheese home with us to finish later. Unfortunately, the cake batter cream cheese is one of PopUp Bagel’s limited edition flavors, but we hope it reappears sooner rather than later.
When the meal was done, we still had about half of each schmear container left over. If you’re planning on purchasing, and you hate wasting food as much as we do, make sure you have extra bagels at home to use up the rest later.
PopUp Bagels is a good spot to visit if you’re looking for a special weekend treat or want to try the weekly schmear flavor. But with a $15 minimum price, if you’re looking for a frequent breakfast order, it’s not everything. While PopUp Bagels’ current rise in popularity contradicts its motto, the hype might be slightly unjustified.
Email: [email protected]
Email: [email protected]
Related Stories:
— Open Tab: Todoroki is on a (sushi) roll
— Open Tab: New Yolktown barely cracks our egg-spectations
— Open Tab: Luna’s Pub & Grill offers twist on classics with decent food
