Bagel Union — Restaurant in Webster Groves

I purchased a selection of bagels with cream cheese. I'd come in intending to buy a couple sandwiches, but had a hard time picking one. The prices for their little bagel sandwiches are pretty steep by local standards for such a small sandwich, and many of sandwich options revolve around lox.

The $15 price tag for a "goldie lox" lox-free beet sandwich stopped me cold, and the few lox-free choices also discouraged me. Since one of the non-lox options is a tuna sandwich and the other is trout, there was little to choose from which wasn't fishy.

Somebody in the management really likes lox, apparently! To which I say, you can have my share. Mmm, cold, raw salmon which has been smoked. Same for trout and tuna. Ugh.

And that $15 vegetarian "goldie lox"? It's a bagel sandwich, about the smallest type of sandwich there is. It is competing with much larger $9 sandwiches at the Panera about a mile away, and Panera sandwiches come with a side of chips.

Really need to think hard about those prices! Once the new wears off a restaurant in Webster, as is inevitable, the customers sure will think about what they get for their money.

But the bagels are good. Not as chewy as a true NYC bagel but not quite as soft as the California sandwich bagels predominant in this area. These bagels are in the middle, between a spongey sandwich bagel and a chewy NYC bagel. In the bagel desert which is the St. Louis area, they are a great improvement over the soft rings of bread which pass for bagels around here. $22 for a "baker's dozen" is a little steep, but if you want a good, fresh bagel, you won't mind paying a little more. And very good cream cheese.

I like to see these Old Webster buildings put to good use, and the old Porter Paints building was in need of a tenant. It's better that it's a tenant which can bring visitors to this end of town in quantities (unlike some of the other tenants who get far fewer visitors). Just a little fixing up of the menu, and Union Bagel can do...

4.5 stars

We were happy to try Bagel Union last Friday. Thankfully we could order ahead because my partner said they were very busy at 10:30am.

We each tried 2 bagels- I had the Full Goldie Lox and the Spicy Tuna Salad. I absolutely loved The Goldie Lox, a great spin on the traditional lox but vegetarian. Very balanced! I also appreciated being able to pick my own bagel, choosing the everything.

The Iggy was a bit of a miss for me. First, I like spicy things a lot, but the amount of chili crisp on it made the other components nearly invisible. It came with a cilantro salad that should have cut through the heat but the chili crisp was really thick on the sandwich. So much that not even the tang from the scallion cream cheese broke the hot and crunchy mouthful. I got it in the Tzitzelnickel bagel which I think would have complemented it well if I could taste anything else. Definitely recommend to BU to make a chili crisp cream cheese instead and add scallions in with the cilantro salad for more balance and component control.

My partner tried The Delox and let me have a bite. Super delicious and well balanced, just like its vegetarian counterpart. He also got a full on an everything bagel. His other bagel was the Beef on Weck and he promptly ate it without a peep.

(The food flavor was 4.5/5) Only downfall was the execution of the Iggy for me.

(Price for quality and quantity 3/5) We both thought the bagels were exceptionally small and priced a bit steep. Like so small we both ate two full bagels and were still hungry.. totaling at $64 before tax 🤯😳😣 Because of that we probably won’t be back very often because there wasn’t anything we couldn’t make on our own for cheaper. And using the same quality ingredients. Next time we will just buy the bagels and made them fancy ourself.

I really appreciate Bagel Union and Union Loafers but personally don’t think the price for breakfast/ brunch should rival...

Absolutely fantastic bagels. The Delox on everything (fresh, warm) with scallion schmeer and the sockeye salmon is on my list of the best things I've ever eaten.

Ideally, arrive at open to avoid the line. If that's not feasible for you, the line moves fairly quickly and isn't too bad, most of the time.

They appear to continue to innovate with new bagels and the addition of the aforementioned sockeye, which is great to see.

Not a huge fan of the coffee. It's decent, but isn't magical. I'm not a die hard coffee lover though -- it could be great just not to my preference. Appreciate the Demerara sugar option though. Edit: they've changed coffee vendors, it's now better.

Wish they had a subset of Union Loafers bread products, but that's just wishful thinking. Probably not feasible.

Edit: they appear to be having trouble keeping stock of the Sockeye, which is really unfortunate, as it's much better than the default. I'm almost tempted to dock them a star because of it. They have come out with an heirloom tomato bagel though, which is very good (seasonal though). I hope they can get this figured out.

Edit 2: The sockeye shortage appears to...