Better Bagels — Restaurant in Boston

DREARY SERVICE and MEH BAGEL. Stopped by on a Friday morning to treat myself to a bagel and was very disappointed for several reasons:

SERVICE RATING =0 When I walked in, I was the only person in the store but the staff was busy filling online orders. I ordered a Sesame bagel, toasted, with plain cream cheese. I also requested that the bagel be "extra toasted" (I prefer a nice, rich brown crust). Just to be sure, I repeated my toasting request and the order-take grunted "yes" - my hopes were starting to be dashed with that response. Behind the counter there were 5 people - 2 assembling orders, 1 slicing bagels, 1 placing completed bagels into bags and stapling slips to the bag, and the grunting order-taker. After about 5-10 minutes of watching lots of frantic action behind the counter with nothing coming across to be delivered to me or the other people who arrived after me, I asked the order-grunter if in-store order were placed in the same queue as on-line order and he said Yes. WHAT??? Why make people IN STORE wait for people who order online and aren't even there - ESPECIALLY when there was more than enough staff on hand to multitask. It seems to me that 1 bagel maker could have continues fulfilling online orders while the second person would have switched to fulfilling the in-store orders and then switched back to fulfilling online orders. Not their system I was told! BETTER BAGEL MANGEMENT obviously values online orders more than people waiting in their store!

BAGEL RATING = 0 The actual bagel is very average – soft and chewy, but in my opinion also very bland, and the cream cheese was also bland – tasted like a processed-commercial type to me. When I actually received my order, I checked and YUP, not toasted. To be fair it was slightly warm, so it was run through whatever they call a toaster, but that machine must be broken because none of the crumb was any shade of brown. I handed the bagel back to the order-grunter and asked for it to be remade – and for “well toasted”. The staff did remake it and YUP, STILL not toasted. To be fair again, the edges were a bit brown, but the rest of the bagel was still untoasted. By this time, I was so frustrated and realized that I wouldn’t get what I wanted so I took the bagel and left. VALUE = 0 If I’m being asked to pay $5+ for a bagel and cream cheese I would expect to get it how I order it – something that didn’t (and I suspect won’t...

The bagels here are good, if you can get it how you ordered it, which for some reason isn't easy here. The toasted bagels here are like barely toasted. No golden brown color, not warm, nothing to show that it's been through a toaster. If I didn't actually see the bagels going through a toaster I would think they weren't being toasted at all. So on my third visit, I ordered my bagel extra toasted and it was perfect. However, ever since then, I can't get an extra toasted bagel. I've gotten extra cream cheese a couple of times but not extra toasted. The worst part is that I don't know this until I'm already sitting down at the office and at that point it's like, OK well I guess I have to eat it like this. I don't know if they just aren't paying attention or just don't care because they are busy, but I'm paying almost $5 for a toasted bagel with cream cheese, it would be nice to get it how I ordered it. The staff is very friendly and the one time when the bagel came out how I ordered it, it was really good. But today I even checked with the gentleman who handed me my order, I said "extra toasted?" and he said yes, but it wasn't. I'll try one more time and after that I'm done which is disappointing because as I said the...

I was so happy for this bagel shop to open... but what is going on with this place?

It’s a Saturday morning and I’m craving a bagel, and I could get this just a few steps from my door, but I’m not going to. The bagels are decent, but they're nothing out of this world and they're not NY bagels. The cream cheese is way too salty and there's way too much of it. It's almost $5 for a bagel with cream cheese, and they don't even know how to toast a bagel. Toasted means it should have some semblance of a golden color, not just feel kind of warm to the touch. And all you have to do to get a slight golden color is turn down the speed on the toaster (that every college cafeteria has and probably half the population knows generally how to use).

Then there's the price... I get that's it's in the Seaport, and rent is high. Sorry, but your rent has nothing to do with how much your food is worth. To charge $9 for a bagel sandwich full of microwaved meat and eggs, is unsupportable. This is not Flour. Get a diner cook in here to fry some eggs and bacon (or something!), and I might start thinking about...