See also: Rosenberg's Deli rolls out real New York-style bagels in Five Points
On the first day, after he posted on Facebook that he'd unlocked the doors at Rosenberg's, sixty people showed up. Last weekend, lines were nearly out the door. Rosenberg's has been making and selling 600 to 1,000 bagels a day, Pollack says, and ran out of what he'd considered to be a month's worth of smoked fish in three days.
"We thought it was going to be way quieter. It's been overwhelming in a good way," Pollack says.
So the grand opening will be simple — just more amazing bagels with amazing toppings, maybe served a bit faster. Last weekend people were waiting thirty minutes for bagel sandwiches, and while no one was complaining, Pollack says he's hired a few more people and worked out some kinks in the ordering system. "That's what soft openings are for, to figure those things out," he says.
Making the grand opening grander will be the introduction of a few new items, including caviar cream cheese, caviar by the ounce, new sandwiches and a bialy — a traditional Jewish roll, bagel-sized with a center more like a crater than a hole, filled with a cooked onion mixture. The first fifty people to arrive tomorrow morning — Rosenberg's opens at 6 a.m. — will also get a "thank-you gift." Pollack says twenty of his regulars have already said they'll be there.
So has Denver gone bagel crazy?"I had people come in who said, 'We moved here from New York three years ago and we've been waiting for you,'" says Pollack. And someone posted on Facebook yesterday that they decided not to move back to the East Coast because Rosenberg's brought home here, in the form of bagels: "Every bite reminded me of home. I didn't think I could stay in Denver much longer, due to the lack of real bagels & pizza, but you've pacified my whining today with a top notch pastrami on onion w/ mayo and swiss."
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