Lox In a Box & After Hours — Restaurant in Sydney

Such an odd experience. To start off, they have an extensive menu of bagels that are loaded with all types of toppings. I just wanted a bagel with some butter on it was all. I was also going to order a coffee. The man told me they will only make the bagels that are on the board, which for me had far too many toppings to be appealing. I wasn’t asking to create an elaborate new menu item for me like the ones they already had, I wanted a bagel, which they had readily available, and to be given butter to even put on myself. And in the very off chance you don’t have butter, tell me what you can offer to smear on instead so I can still have a basic bagel. They continued to tell me me that they will only give me a bagel that’s on the menu with all toppings to go (to go is clearly what I wanted as well!). My request was not out of this world. I was asking for them to basically give me less, do less work and charge me the same! I’d have even been fine with just cream cheese, which is also a topping on their menu. I’d likely have been a regular daily or weekly customer. I decided to not order anything from this shop as the man working was very dismissive and passive aggressive and kept repeating the same thing and interrupting me without taking a moment to consider how simple what I was asking was. Again, I was more than happy to pay the full price of the bagel with all of the toppings I would not be receiving. I have never in my life seen a bagel shop anywhere in the world not allow you to buy a bagel as is with butter or cream cheese on the side, and I explained this to the man as well. It’s visually a cute shop, I give it 2 stars for that, but it’s ran by a man that makes the experience less than cute. It only takes a moment to stop and listen to what someone is asking and communicate...

Okay - let’s clarify one thing right away as a PSA: these are not New York style bagels!! Please do not go expecting a chewy, salty, malty NYC bagel. We made that mistake and ended up realizing LIB serves Polish style bagels (basically enriched dough with lighter boiling). Never had a polish style bagel before and can’t say I prefer that preparation, so I won’t comment on whether LIB makes a decent polish style bagel. The bagels at LIB are rich and crumby - like white sandwich bread with a shiny bagel exterior. You have been warned.

LIB clearly has excellent fryer work - as demonstrated by the katsu and latke - and the Nutella cookie took our breath away. So they clearly know how to bake here. The stuffs inside the bagel - pickles, slaw, etc - did not possess any particular charm, but at least did not disappoint. Cute atmosphere, decent service, and not terrible prices.

FWIW if you find yourself looking for good, NYC style bagels in San Diego, look up Desperado - will...

Typically LOVE Lox, the food quality is usually consistent as is the customer experience.That has changed since opening their larger cafe. Today we had a horrible experience ordering - initially the delivery timeline was 20-35 minutes, we waited an hour and 30 minutes for our food to even leave the restaurant and another 15 for the delivery. We called 3 times for updates and were told the restaurant was really busy - all the while they were still open for more orders on UberEats and had updated their maximum delivery time to only 50 minutes, which was 40 minutes shy of how long we actually waited and likely led to more unhappy customers. A case of really poor restaurant management, as all they needed to do was turn the order off and work through the backlog, I do really feel for the team working as well. After all of that our order came incorrect, and was definitely not to their standard. Will only be returning for in store...