Nervous Charlie's Bagels — Restaurant in Austin

This review is more for the conduct of a Nervous Charlie's employee than for the food.

As a Jersey girl in Austin, I appreciate that I can get bagels that remind me of home at Nervous Charlie's. However, after an incident today, I am hesitant to ever return.

We intended to get bagels this morning. My S.O. stopped by the door so I could get out of the car and get in line. There were no cars behind us, so we were not blocking the flow of traffic. A couple came out of nowhere - they walked into my S.O.'s blind spot, I didn't see them either. The woman must have thought that he was going to hit them with the car. At this point, my S.O. was still stopped outside the door of Nervous Charlies as I had just gotten out, so he had not moved the car. The woman just went off on my S.O., flipping him off and smacking the car. The man followed her lead and went to flip my S.O. off 2 more times. Then, they got in my face (about 10 inches away) and started screaming unintelligibly. I told them that this was a misunderstanding, and to calm down and back away from me. I felt threatened and unsafe.

This entire incident took place about 10 feet from the door. A Nervous Charlie's employee was at the order pick-up window and saw the whole thing. He cheered, "Yeah!" when the man flipped off my S.O. The employee also did nothing when this couple screamed in my face for several minutes. I'm a petite 5ft 2in woman. He was complicit while not 1, but 2 people larger than me screamed at me 10 inches from my face over a misunderstanding.

In this day and age, we cannot expect businesses to care about their customers as people. My S.O. and I like to support small businesses, like Nervous Charlie's, because their owners seem to care more about their customers than larger corporations. After this incident, I have to question how much Nervous Charlie's cares about their customers to allow something like...

starting off I want to say I’ve been coming here for about two years now. love the bagels here love the service i’ve gotten. on saturday I went and got three cream cheese bagels. my sister halfway through her bagel noticed a small piece of ham/bacon right in the middle. mistakes happen stuff gets wrongly placed but being discriminated against before, this does make you feel a little on edge. As a muslim I can not eat pork. I called and the manager on duty didn’t seem sorry at all didn’t seem apologetic. all I got was a refund but money isn’t what’s important here, it’s how you feel welcome in an establishment. the least you can do is apologize as a manager for something like this happening. guess not. she also mentioned that cross contamination is common and word by word “there’s bacon flying around everywhere”. that statement especially was a micro-aggression. the horror i felt after knowing i’ve been eating here for so long and for her to speak so causally of something that is extremely important to me. if you are speaking to someone who just had a bad experience mistake or not, try using words that won’t make someone’s religious beliefs feel threatened. to the manager I spoke to: you should learn some empathy and learn how to speak to people from different backgrounds. that being said if you’re vegan or have religious restrictions to certain meats, spend your money somewhere else. a lot of my friends are vegan and probably didn’t know this as well. this place gets a lot of orders by the looks of it but it’s not hard to implement a way to keep cross contamination from happening. there are other places who can do it so why not here? keeping food handling organized should not be that much of an issue. sadly this is not a place I feel safe eating anymore and I urge anyone else who’s muslim not to eat...

I’ve been to Nervous Charlie’s before. The food is alright, but this review is service centered.

Today (01/26/2025) it was fairly packed. Enough for patrons that came after my friend and I to rush for seats like musical chairs.

I ordered a Lox bagel and went back behind the line divider to wait as there is no seating at the time.

Queue a wait time of 20 minutes. 11:35am to 11:55am. I see a bunch of people including my friend who ordered after me get their bagels. “Oh my simple cold Lox bagel must be taking awhile.” I think this, giving them the benefit of the doubt. I go to the front to wait, hoping someone would see me and ask me if I needed anything. It was a busy day so I stand there patiently, the kicker is that every single employee ignores me, and skillfully, for a straight 10 minutes while I look like an idiot.

Finally someone asks me, AFTER TEN MINUTES of standing up there looking dumb, if I had an order. At this point I’m sure my displeasure is apparent on my face as I tell them the name of the order: Henry. You know, the name of several kings and one of the most common names in America? Of course the man lies to me saying my order is still coming out. Turns out, they couldn’t get my name right, so when it was called, I obviously did not respond. ANNRY? Please be so for real. No hate, but GET SOMEONE THAT CAN HEAR AND SPELL NAMES. They spelled Nicole wrong too.

So not only did you get my name wrong which made you call out the wrong name, you lied about the order still coming out and ignored me for an extended amount of time when I politely came up to inquire where my order was. Well hey, at least the bagel was...