bkd Bagels — Restaurant in Leesburg

I really want to give BKD Bagels 5 stars. It seems like it should be a 5-star bagel shop. I know the proprietors spent a lot of time and energy getting this place ready. During construction, I would often check back on their social media account to see when they were going open, as my mouth watered at their teaser pictures of glorious bagel sandwiches. Walking into BKD Bagels, it looks like a 5-star bagel shop, it smells like a 5-star bagel shop. Unfortunately, these are not 5-star bagels. My first order during their soft opening was an everything bagel with vegetable cream cheese. The bagel, to put it lightly was diminutive. However, I do want to note that there was plenty of everything bagel seasoning and this is something that is often overlooked at other bagel joints. The cream cheese was great. Whipped to perfection with little uniformly chopped bits of celery, red peppers and carrots. Nevertheless, I’m sorry to say the bagel was sad. It was quite hard and chewy. Not the size I expected, especially when their teaser photos had HUGE yeasty and puffy bagels. I thought, “eh maybe it’s because this is their soft opening, they are working out the kinks”. I decided to give them another try this week. This time I ordered “The Peoples Champ” with sprouts. This is their version of a lox bagel sandwich. The sandwich looked great, but again I was met with a particularly hard, small and semi stale bagel. Biting into this chewy sandwich resulted in all ingredients ejecting out the backside, causing much sadness and despair. I hope this review isn’t coming off negative, I think the execution of this place was well done. And hey, maybe in the future they’ll get their bagel flux capacitor working properly to allow maximum bagel goodness. Until then, I cannot give BKD Bagels more...

Living in Leesburg we saw that this place has been slated to open for a while and decided to try it out today. Having eaten at many delicious bagel places locally and other places we’ve lived - this was mediocre at best.

Experience: We had called in the morning to order for pickup but was told they don’t do orders ahead over the phone. They seriously need to implement some kind of system that allows people to order and pay ahead. I had to drive to go order in person and the line was practically to the entrance. I waited about 10 minutes in line, ordered, and then waited about another 10 or so minutes to pick up my order from the counter. Staff was pleasant. Wasn’t impressed with the wait times though for 2 bagels. The bagels were packaged in 2 separate plastic clamshell containers. Extremely wasteful if you ask me. Pretty much any other bagel place would wrap them in a paper material.

Bagels: mediocre. We had blueberry bagels with egg, cheese, and avocado. Total for the bagel sandwiches was just north of $16, which to me is on the pricier side. The bagels were quite smaller than I expected, much smaller than any kind of bagel you’d find in a grocery store. And get ready for a jaw workout - these bagels were hard and tough, think baked sourdough crust and a thick interior. Personal preference is a lighter, softer bagel. Still feel a bit hungry after finishing the sandwich.

Overall: maybe try it once for yourself to see how you like it, but I honestly would hesitate...

Noting that most reviewers seem to have an excellent experience here, we must have picked an unlucky day or time to visit. The building does have very nice decor, and we felt comfortable and could chat easily up on the upper floor.

The wait was fairly short for our food, about five minutes I think. But the order was missing an item when it first came up. I returned to the pickup counter for a correction and the worker’s attitude was unexpectedly off. She acted as though it was an inconvenience to her that I had paid for but not received my wife’s hash brown. I assumed it was her job to verify orders before calling patrons to the counter, so it seemed strange that she indicated no contrition and offered no apology.

The next issue was with the quality of our food. Everything looked fantastic on the plate, but once we tried to take our first bites we were both surprised at the amount of grease dripping off our bagels. After a couple of bites we were both feeling a bit tired from trying to masticate our way through overly dense, rubbery bagels. In the end neither of us finished our food - we just ran out of endurance trying to chew through it.

I’m a bit sad we caught this place on such a bad day. We had really been looking forward to trying bkd. Now we probably...