Old Bagel House — Restaurant in Hamilton

Of course I should review this, as an ex-Montrealer and conoisseur of genuine St Viateur bagels. You can get the real item at Metro but they are bagged in plastic and shipped long-distance, so they are lacking something. By comparison, these bagels are heftier, more loaded with toppings, and just as chewy. Be careful eating the caraway version as you will leave a thick trail of them wherever you go. All types (onion, pumpernickel, poppy are also excellent) come from a genuine wood-fired oven the owners had installed here when they bought the place a few years ago. It was formerly a Great Canadian Bagel franchise, as I recall, whose product was inferior in every way to these. Fortino's advertises real Montreal bagels, too, but they have been getting drier, chewier, and smaller over the past few years, and they no longer compare. In addition to the bagels, you can get cream cheese to go with them (which I can't recommend, it was kind of watery), lox (packaged), as well as old-style pastries including strudel and hamantashen. The hamantashen, as my Jewish momme might have said, are big enough to choke a horse. When we bought some lately for Purim (both prune and poppy were in stock), we had to cut them into four pieces each to get them to a manageable size....

When I traveled to New York we stopped by H&H bagels which is supposed to be "like no other bagels in the world". We ended up spending over $30 usd per smoked salmon bagel and they were good.

I just came out of Old Bagel House after getting a craving for a bagel when leaving the neighbouring dollar store.

Oh my God. I ended eating two in the car.

The bagels speak for themselves and the price is amazing for what you are getting, but I cannot express how fantastic my short visit in this store was.

I commend their covid protocols and as a father of a child with serious cardiac issues, I felt safe in there.

I'm not sure if the person who served me was the owner or just someone who clearly loves what they do. He provided suggestions and some samples of other spreads. He explained the process of how they are made and how people prefer them prepared.

I inquired about the ingredients in a potatoe side dish because my daughter has a lot of restrictions on what she can eat with her medication. We ended up chatting about it as he prepared our meal and offered to pray for her.

I entered hungry and left full, physically and...

Beware of the Dundas Old House Bagel Store!!!

I recently visited Bagel House with the intention of purchasing a Montreal smoked meat brisket. When I inquired about the type of Montreal smoked meat they were selling, I was given vague answers. Curious, I asked to see the label on the brisket to verify what I was actually buying. Shockingly, the clerk refused to show me the label and even went as far as ripping it off when I tried to look at it myself. She bluntly told me, "I can't show you that."

This experience left me feeling very uneasy. If there’s nothing to hide, why the secrecy? I believe it's important to inform others to be cautious when ordering Montreal smoked meat from this establishment. Transparency should be a given when it comes to food products, and the fact that they were so adamant about keeping the label hidden raises serious concerns. All I wanted was to know the quality and type of meat I was purchasing—it's alarming that this information is treated...