There’s a certain itch that only a bagel can scratch. Warm and chewy on the inside, crisp and glossy on the outside, slathered with cool cream cheese, they’re peak comfort food. And a decade ago, you’d have been hard pressed to find an independent bagel shop in Albuquerque.

But in a post-pandemic bakery renaissance, Albuquerque is brimming with fresh bagel options. From a bagel counter tucked away in a community center to bustling downtown storefronts, you’ll find an array of textures and flavors—no two Burque bagels are alike. All are boiled, some are hand-rolled, and before you ask: Yes, all these spots have a green chile bagel.

Ruthie’s Bagels

Ruth Rosenstein of Ruthie’s Bagels can lay claim to the oldest of the current crop of bagel spots. Her bagel counter, open since 2018, is nestled within the lobby of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Albuquerque. And no, you do not have to be Jewish to stop by. Potential customers sometimes call and ask, “‘Can I come and get bagels? Do I have to be a member? Do I have to be Jewish?’” Rosenstein said with a laugh. The shop is open five days a week, and open to the public. And though Rosenstein’s bagel offerings lean classic, her personal favorite is the red chile.

Rosenstein, born and raised in Albuquerque, has always been closely involved with the greater New Mexico Jewish community. After running a coffee cart in Santa Fe, she started cooking and catering meals for Albuquerque schools, eventually renting space at the Jewish Community Center kitchen, where she was asked to overhaul the center’s café. For the café and catering business, called Rhubarb & Elliott, Rosenstein soon realized she had no go-to bagel source. “We just started making our own,” Rosenstein said. To her, the perfect bagel is both chewy and crispy, and not too heavy. It also has to be generous with the toppings; to that end, her bagels have seeds on both sides. “If you have to [split one] with somebody, you each get enough.”

Shortly after Ruthie’s was up and running, the pandemic hit. “People wanted to feel comfortable. They wanted something that reminded them of home,” Rosenstein said. She started taking preorders through an online pickup system. “They wanted something that made you feel connected, part of something. . . . So bagels went crazy.”

Nowadays, Rosenstein’s resources are focused on her school meal business (preparing breakfasts, lunches, and after-school meals and suppers for twelve schools and three dozen community centers) and wholesaling bagels to three La Montañita Food Co-op locations and two other stores in Santa Fe and Taos. But you can still grab a bagel and cream cheese at Rhubarb & Elliott’s walk-up window any time during open hours. 

When I stopped in, Rosenstein treated me to a sesame bagel straight out of the oven. Eaten fresh, with whipped cream cheese, the bagel was wonderfully dense with a sturdy, chewy shell, showering seeds everywhere. Typically, the team bakes in the afternoons, making this fresh-off-the-tray experience elusive for drop-in customers, but starting in September, Rosenstein is kicking off “Fresh Fridays”: Bagels will be boiled and baked first thing in the morning and available in 4- and 6- packs, along with fresh challah, from 8 am to 3 pm.

📍 5520 Wyoming NE, 505-246-9608

Sunday Bagels

If you’ve been to the Downtown Growers’ Market most any Saturday and wondered where that long line winding halfway down the park leads, we don’t even have to look to tell you: It’s Sunday Bagels. The business, started by Nick Fitzgerald and a partner who has since stepped away, built a loyal following slinging bagels at the market. Now, Sunday has a brick-and-mortar shop on Central and Fifteenth, a chic, updated but still cozy space with dine-in seating.

Sunday embraces unusual flavor combinations and has a knack for Instagram, where they often showcase sandwiches bursting with color. Their naturally leavened sourdough bagels come in classic flavors, but also in blue corn, serrano and basil, and fermented honey garlic, with zany specials (zhug and provolone, anyone?) on offer most weeks. The cream cheeses are delightfully unconventional, with options like pickled red onion and caper or caramelized honey and chamomile. The bagel dough itself also strays from convention, with a sourdough tang and big bubbles—all the better to trap toppings. “I know people want dense bagels,” Fitzgerald said, but “I want them to be light with a good shell, and be open, have a good crumb. . . . I think they taste better when they’re like that.”

With a traditionally dense bagel, he said, “You can’t really taste anything in the bagel itself, so I just wanted them to be tall and big and shiny, and be light and open and good for sandwiches and whatever you want to do with them.” And Sunday brings the breakfast sandwich up about five notches: There’s a gussied up smoked salmon and chive cream cheese combo, a folded egg sandwich involving whipped feta and escabeche, and a Japanese curry chicken salad with pickled radish, among others.

Their pop-up success story also has roots in the pandemic: Fitzgerald grew up in Stowe, Vermont, where bagel shops were part of his weekly routine. He’d worked in restaurants, where he made bagels for staff meals, and at a knife company, which brought him to Reno, Nevada, to help start a new production facility. When the pandemic hit, he made his way to Albuquerque, where he had friends. Almost right away, he and original partner Bobby Nolan started making bagels. Fitzgerald said, “As you know, everybody was making sourdough, and we didn’t want to do that entirely, so we started doing bagels.”

Working out of a commissary kitchen, he and Nolan started hosting Sunday bagel pop-ups at Gravity Bound Brewing in late 2020, expanding to the growers’ market the following year, but “we always dreamed about having a landing pad, or like our own home.” Ultimately, a loyal customer who worked in real estate helped them secure the Central Avenue location, and with time and help from more friends, they were able to open up shop on a limited weekend schedule. Fitzgerald said he’d like to be open more days, “but we started this with the money in our pockets, and it’s taken a long time to get the motor running.” He said he wants Sunday to become a neighborhood hang, but also “I want to represent New Mexico. . . . and make a menu that kind of speaks to everybody.”

📍 1433 Central NW, 505-785-7317

Horizon Bagels & Cafe

Liz Perlino’s shop in the Northeast Heights is a relative newcomer to the bagel scene. Horizon opened its doors in October 2023, but she and business partner Robert Wolfe, formerly of Wolfe’s Bagels, have been making bagels quite a bit longer than that. 

Perlino hails from western New York, and also spent time in the Atlanta and Boston areas. She ran an Italian restaurant with her brother in Atlanta and, after moving to Albuquerque, a gourmet popcorn store. But “I’ve always been a baker,” Perlino said. “That was kind of my passion, so I wanted to do a bakery-coffee shop—that was always my dream.” Wolfe’s closed in 2015, and Perlino met Wolfe while working for Ruth Rosenstein of Ruthie’s Bagels, where she had been helping develop bagel recipes. Ultimately, with Wolfe wanting to reopen a bagel shop and Perlino ready to start a bakery, the two decided to team up on Horizon.

Horizon’s bagels are boiled, which Perlino said was a departure from the old Wolfe’s, where they used a steam oven, and they’re just the right texture inside: soft with a dense crumb, but not heavy. Horizon has all the classics, plus a chocolate chip bagel, along with red, green, and green-chile-cheddar varieties. Perlino’s current favorite is the rosemary-parmesan. But bagel making isn’t without its hiccups. “They’re very temperamental, you know, we won’t [always] get the rise we want to,” Perlino said. Still, the café has the feel of a neighborhood New York deli, with all the fixings: coffees, pastries, and Ashkenazi Jewish classics like kugel, rugelach, challah, chicken soup, and a Reuben sandwich. 

“My family has a bunch of Jewish recipes that I wanted to incorporate, just because that’s what I grew up eating,” she said. Plant-based options include a vegan schmear and a lox made of marinated carrots. And for her newest bagel flavor, Perlino is drawing on her surroundings. “My next one I want to try is a biscochito,” she said—though she’ll probably leave out the lard.

📍 4000 Louisiana NE, Ste D, 505-221-0668

Kaufman’s Coffee & Bagels

David Kaufman wants one thing clear: Big chain bagels these are not. “I almost called the place Stephen Hawking’s because I thought I was smarter than Einstein,” he joked. But “I didn’t want to get sued by Einstein [Bros.] Bagels.” With Kaufman’s Coffee & Bagels, he is following in another big tradition, however—that of the New York bagel. Kaufman originally came out west as a child when his family bought a house in Albuquerque. In his mid-twenties, he trained at culinary school in New York, then returned to New Mexico for an internship at La Casa Sena in Santa Fe. After years working in New Mexico restaurants and hotels as both a pastry chef and executive chef, Kaufman said, “it finally came down to, what does this town need? What does Albuquerque, in my opinion, need, as far as the coffee shop? . . . That’s a true New York bagel.”

And Kaufman said he sticks to old-world processes as he learned them, timing the rise and bake over three days, starting with a poolish, using barley malt, and baking on cedar planks with burlap, a traditional method to dry the bottom halves before flipping. Kaufman uses pH-adjusted water to resemble slightly more acidic New York water, and his staff roll 450–500 bagels a day. The most important thing to Kaufman, he quipped, is “just doing them right and trying to be as consistent as possible to how I was trained back in the old days with old Jewish guys named Zeb, and stuff like that.”

True to old-school portions, the bagels themselves are smaller than the now-standard giants. They’re dense, chewy, and come in the classic flavors, along with New York rye, blue corn, garlic onion, and Kaufman’s favorite, the pretzel (which he says really is just a rolled Bavarian pretzel in bagel shape). Kaufman sells Java Joe’s coffee and the restaurant returns the favor, serving his bagels at the downtown mainstay. 

In the near future, he said he’s looking forward to an expansion into the space next door, which will allow for much-needed additional seating. That, he said, and one day he might try his hand at that other New York staple: “I’m thinking about doing pizza.”

📍 2500 Central SW, Ste B900, 505-361-1734