The Hot Bagel Shop — Restaurant in Houston

Our first time trying this place and we were beyond impressed with our experience. Highlights were the quality of the food, variety of options, speed of service, and mostly, the customer service. Dominic was executional and he is who helped us with our order.

We visited on Sunday during the late morning rush when the line was out the front door. There were no empty tables, several people waiting for their food, and at least 15 people in line in front of us. Typically, we would have left because I am not the most patient person. We waited no more than 4-5 minutes before we ordered, the online orders and people waiting before us cycled through swiftly without a hiccup, and we placed our order for my whole family (over six items). The cashier, Dominic, was friendly, asked us how our day was, smiled, made eye contact, and clarified our order back to us with the various options. He moved efficiently, and was managing a few other tasks like the phone, the kitchen employees coming in and out, and the online orders. But never once did we feel like he was not listening or too busy or flustered. He was extremely pleasant.

As we received our order, not even 5 minutes later, one small item was missing. We told the person at the counter, they quickly prepared it (a plain bagel) and handed it to us, and as we went to leave Dominic shouted out to us “Justin, sorry about that missing item - hope you guys have a great day”. Mind you, there once again 15 new people in line, 10 coworkers of his running around filling orders, and 5-10 more people waiting in the lobby for online orders. Yet, he made a choice, to acknowledge the minor miss, greet us on the way out, and remembered my name.

This is customer service excellence. At a time where people have to remind us to be patient with service industry workers because of the economic impacts inflation and labor costs have on the workforce, Dominic reminds us there are incredible employees out there who take pride in their work. What an amazing representative of a brand. That’s exactly the type of employee I try and headhunt and recruit. We need more people...

I had been to this place a couple of times and today would be my third visit since I had such a great experience before. I ordered a cheese dog bagel, a breakfast sausage bagel and a Salmon sandwich/bagel. The regular bagels bread was cold, stiff, and there was no flavor in the bread, it was bland, the eggs in the breakfast sausage bagel tasted bland too, and just overall unsatisfying. Here’s where things took a turn for the Worst….my salmon in the salmon bagel was ROTTEN, it smelled too fishy as in it had been out for awhile, or just passed it’s edible date, and the color on many areas was GREY. If I had not opened my sandwich before eating it, I’d probably be poisoned right now 🤮 I was halfway home so I didn’t want to turn back around in Houston traffic, I was hungry too! Looking at an article about this shop on Google made sense to me, seems that the original owner passed away this Year in January….Rest his Soul, THAT explains ALOT. I really enjoyed this shop , idk if it’s slacking, if it’s the staff today, or the new management is such NOT taking care of the quality and safety of the food they are serving ..it’s just WRONG to sell a customer unsanitary food that can harm them. There was too much cream cheeses added to the sandwich, creating this messy clumpy texture & the capers in the sandwich appeared shriveled and old too, who keeps such old food and why? To cut costs?! Pure laziness….YEAH, the standard has lowered, and I will not...

I've been wanting to try this place for awhile, it's just always closed when I pass by. Today was the first and last time I will visit this shop. Since it was my first time there, I was quickly scanning the menu. I knew what type of bagel I wanted; I was just looking to see if there was anything else I may want to try.

I asked the woman taking my order if they made muffins. She was quite rude in stating they were a bagel shop, and why would they make muffins; why do people ask if they have muffins. I just ordered the onion bagel with plain cream cheese and didn't bother looking at anything else.

While waiting on my order, a woman came in saying that an item was missing from her order. The woman who took my order (whom I figured to be a manager/owner) immediately started questioning this lady as if she was lying and trying to jack a bagel dog. Luckily, there was a nice young lady behind the counter that stood up and said that she was the one that put the order together and that it was her fault. I swear, the manager was ready to call the customer a liar and was again, so rude. I was so happy to see the other lady behind the counter stand up an take accountability for the error.

I won't ever be back to this place. I'm not sure how it's still in business. When you read the bottom of their receipt, it's quite obvious that customer service is...