Mazál Bagels & Café – Ópera — Restaurant in Madrid

“The loneliness of the expatriate is of an odd and complicated kind, for it is inseparable from the feeling of being free, of having escaped.” Adam Gopnik

Those who move thousands of miles from their home across an ocean know this almost contradictory feeling well, they know the ebb and flow of these emotions, the constant tug-of-war between loneliness and freedom. And they know well that there are days, or weeks, when the pull of loneliness and homesickness tug the hardest and pull your free and straining body over the line.

In these times, the body craves comfort and it is up to you to feed those cravings with a call home, a favorite show, or a comfort food.

The bagel is an elusive food in the streets of Madrid, until recently they were impossible to find on grocery store shelves, and even now the ones available fall flat, wrapped in plastic, and sit tasteless in the isles of a few select chains. The bagels in the few cafes that serve them also fail to reach the expectations of the refined tastes of the northeastern costal elite bagel enthusiast.

Mazál appears to the expatriate as something of a mirage sitting on a quiet side street of Madrid’s opera neighborhood. Through the windows one can see the metal baskets filled with bagels of many varieties from poppy to onion to jalapeño to cinnamon to the much beloved everything, to name a few.

To the trained eye of the bagel aficionado this excess of round bread hanging from metal wicker is a good sign, a reminder of the bagel shops of Queens or Brooklyn. The style of the shop itself evokes these boroughs as well. The decor calls upon the New York City subway circa 1976, minus the graffiti and with a Joker (2019)-esque color scheme.

The clientele consists of the diaspora of the American landscape; Midwest trixies, Long Island hipsters, and vocally fried valley girls together. They dress in pastel sambas and blue collar jackets, garb that would identify them as guiris to any madrileño from miles away. They come to Mazál to congratulate in this bagel sacristy, to pray at the alter of the holy trinity of bacon, egg and cheese. For a moment, in this divine bodega ritual, they are transported to their Motherland, taken by manifest destiny and discarded with a hope of a new life in the old world. And with a bite through the halves of a sesame seed stuffed with lox, cream cheese and avocado a resurrection occurs where the once decreased body, the body of freedom and escape, finds the strength, like Jacob fighting the angel, to tug that rope once more to pull against the lonesomeness and homesickness for another day, week, year, lifetime.

Service was quite slow, 20 minutes for just the coffee. The bagels were solid,...

I had a terrible experience at Mazál Bagels today that completely ruined my morning. As someone who works in the food industry, I was genuinely shocked by how one staff member treated me. My girlfriend and I came in hoping to enjoy some New York–style bagels that reminded us of home. The food and coffee were great, and most of the staff are friendly. However, one particular employee — who I’ve interacted with before without issue — behaved in a way that was completely unacceptable.

We were enjoying our coffee while I was catching up on work. Without warning, this waiter brought us the bill and said he needed to clear the table. That’s understandable — it’s a small space and they likely had waiting customers. I immediately began packing up and saving my work. Despite this, he told us again, moments later, that we needed to leave. My girlfriend was already standing, and I was putting away my headphones. Within 10 seconds, he repeated himself again, this time with an aggressive tone. I calmly responded that I just needed a few seconds to save my work, but he escalated things — snapping at me and moving toward us in a confrontational way. I felt completely disrespected. Having worked in hospitality myself, I believe professionalism and respect toward paying customers are essential, even in stressful moments where the customer is being annoying. I’ll admit — at that point, I got upset and raised my voice a little, causing a small scene. But after how I was treated, I believe my reaction was understandable. I was calm and cooperative until he pushed the situation unnecessarily. Then, instead of de-escalating, he began relentlessly arguing with me and even started involving other customers, pointing at me and asking things like “Isn’t this customer acting horribly?” — trying to turn others against me, which felt incredibly unprofessional and humiliating. At one point, he even told my girlfriend to “get your boy in check,” which was childish and disrespectful. To make matters worse, he tried to walk us out before we’d even paid. Despite being treated terribly, we still returned inside to pay. Instead of letting us settle the bill and leave, he continued to argue, saying I should’ve saved my work at the counter and that I was embarrassing myself.

This was a clear case of an employee taking his stress out on a customer. I was disrespected, publicly embarrassed, and made to feel like a burden for doing nothing more than finishing my coffee and saving my work before leaving. I won’t be returning, which is unfortunate, because the bagels are...

Food is good but they need to do something about operations. Cleaning the fryer in the afternoon on a Saturday isn’t good timing from a customer standpoint as half the hot bagels weren’t available on a busy day. Perhaps would’ve been better if the service wasn’t slow as well.

Edit: since somebody is apparently actually taking reviews into account I will take this at face value and clarify what happened. On arrival, the host had a cold demeanor and told us to sit “wherever is clean” instead of being indicated (was our table clean? Probably, but it created a sense of unease and the table we chose was certainly greasy. What was clear is we felt like she did not care much either way) then the waitress took a long time to give us the menu (we had to flag her when other customers arrived and she took their orders’ first, as perhaps the hostess did not communicate there were new customers at the back and nobody noticed us), and then a long time to take our orders. The bagel kind we wanted were not available, but we quickly switched. After long enough we thought we were getting our food, she came back to tell us we’d have to order again as they were cleaning the fryer and no fried chicken was available - unclear why she did not clarify more quickly as we were quite hungry by that point and had already modified our order. Once the food arrived, it was quite good and we even took ordered some home by the counter, but observing how slowly and disinterestedly they worked gave us the impression these were inexperienced people more interested in discussing amongst themselves than managing a busy place - this probably works fine on a relatively calm day, but not what I would’ve expected on Saturday afternoon when there is an expectation that many customers will be there. It’s worth mentioning the restaurant wasn’t fully packed either, I’d say 3/4 full and it seemed well-staffed relative to other places of a similar capacity, so it was a little hard to understand why everything felt so slow and...