Chef and owner Miles Odell is originally from New Jersey and worked in Michelin-starred Japanese restaurants in New York. He also spent time in Kyoto, after he was selected by the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture to be part of a culinary ambassador program.
He moved to Denver two years ago, and began slinging his own style of bagels at the Highlands Square Farmers Market; he debuted his brick-and-mortar at 3200 Irving Street this month.
Odell's fine-dining background shows in how he runs his bagel shop. "The reason I opened this shop is because I love making bagels and I love working in restaurants, and I also strive to work with the best ingredients," he explains. "That's what makes me happy as a chef, and I hope customers can see that in the finished product."
The shop has two staff members dedicated to hand-rolling 1,000 bagels a day, and it has sold out almost every day it's been open. But some might have a bit of bagel sticker shock when browsing the menu board.
Options range from classic everything and sesame to rosemary and furikake to a bagel topped with 60 grams of house-cured salmon roe — "That's a lot," Odell notes — priced at $22 for a whole, while a whole Nova lox bagel is $17. All sandwiches are served open-faced, and halves are available, but customers must order two — though you can mix and match. "We can't just have a bunch of half bagels lying around," says Odell.
"Maybe our prices aren't for everyone and that's okay," he admits. But, "We're using premium products, that's the reasoning. We're literally using the best products available — not commodity flour or the cheapest eggs ...We also pay people a very livable wage for Denver, offer benefits and give our staff paid time off."
How do the prices at Odell's stack up against other popular bagel options? Bagel math is a bit more complex than pizza math, but let's break it down:
Price for a single bagel with cream cheese:
Odell's: $5Rich Spirit: $5 (there is a 50-cent upcharge for lox cream cheese)
Call Your Mother: From $4.75 (for plain cream cheese) to $5.75 (for candied salmon cream cheese)
Rosenberg's: From $6 (for plain cream cheese) to $8 for premium cream cheese (such as lox, caviar or tofu)
Zaidy's (which gets its bagels from Rosenberg's): $4.50 for a plain schmear
Moe's Bagels: $4.60
The Bagel Deli (which gets its bagels from Moe's): From $5.50 (for plain cream cheese) to $5.95 for chive, jalapeno cheddar or veggie
Leroy's: From $3.75 (for plain cream cheese) to $4.50 for deluxe cream cheese
Conclusion: Rosenberg's is the most expensive for the most basic bagel experience and Leroy's is the only bagel under $4, but there's not a huge spread between the rest of the pack — so find the bagel that's right for you and enjoy!
Price for a bagel with lox and cream cheese:
This is where things get tricky, as different spots include different toppings and different amounts of lox on their standard lox bagel sandwiches. Plus, not all lox options are created equal — and not all of these are even lox.What's the difference between lox, gravlax and smoked salmon?
Lox: Salmon belly that is cured in a salty brine but not smoked.
Gravlax: Made similarly to lox, but the brine includes additional ingredients — traditionally sugar and dill.
Smoked Salmon: Salt-cured, like lox, but also either cold- or hot-smoked, and it can be made with other parts of the fish
Nova lox: A type of smoked salmon made using fish from Nova Scotia
Here's what each bagel spot offers for its most standard lox bagel sandwich:
Odell's
Nova lox (about 3 ounces per half) served open-faced with cream cheese, dill, red onion, capers, chives and extra virgin olive oil. Note: Lox is sourced from a smokehouse in upstate New York.
Cost: $8.50 half, $17 whole (6 ounces of lox)
Rosenberg's
The Standard: 2.5 ounces house-cured gravlax, plain cream cheese, tomato, capers, red onion plus pickle and side. Note: Rosenberg's is the only spot listed that has a full in-house fish-curing and -smoking program.
Cost: $16 (you can also order a bagel topped with only cream cheese and gravlax for $14)
Rich Spirit
You can add 2 ounces of lox to any bagel with cream cheese for a $4 upcharge. Note: Lox sourced from Spence & Co.
Cost: $9
Call Your Mother
The Royal Palm: 2 ounces of smoked salmon, plain cream cheese, cucumbers, tomatoes, red onion and capers, Note: Smoked salmon sourced from Western Deli Provisions.
Cost: $12
Leroy's
Lox Sandwich: 3 ounces smoked salmon, capers, onion, tomato, and plain cream cheese.
Cost: $9.95
The Bagel Deli
B-2 Nova Lox (over 3 ounces total) served open-faced with cream cheese, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, capers and a pickle on the side.
Cost: $18.50 (you can also order a handheld bagel with cream cheese and 2 ounces of lox for $13.95; additional veggies are 25 cents each.
Zaidy's
Lox and bagel sandwich: 3 ounces lox and plain cream cheese.
Cost: $17
Moe's Bagels
New Yorker: Just under 2 ounces of Ducktrap lox filet, plain cream cheese, tomatoes, onions and capers.
Cost: $14.99
Conclusion: Bagel Deli, the family-owned spot on East Hampden Avenue, actually clocks in the highest for its open-faced sandwich with veggies made on a bagel sourced from Moe's. Odell's ties for second with Zaidy's (which no longer makes its bagels in-house after outsourcing that to Rosenberg's) — though for a full bagel, you're getting nearly double the amount of lox at Odell's versus both Bagel Deli and Zaidy's.
Some final bagel thoughts
This proliferation of bagel options is 100 percent a good thing for the city, and each spot offers something a little different beyond just the price point. Local chains like Moe's and Leroy's are great for the convenience and budget-friendly factor, and spots like Zaidy's and the Bagel Deli are beloved for much more than bagels.Here's what we like about the other standouts in the scene:
Odell's Bagel: The Newest
Miles Odell is creating his own style of bagel and doing so with a lot of care. Flour plays a big role in that; he uses three kinds and most of it is milled locally (the rest comes from surrounding states). "We keep a lot of the grain intact so it's more nutrient-dense," Odell says. "And it's a long fermentation process — 48 hours," which results in a more digestible product.
Hand-rolling bagels for a perfectly imperfect shape, hand-slicing lox so it's paper-thin, and getting creative with flavors are just some of the reasons we're excited to have Odell's on the scene. Even the American cheese for the bacon and egg sandwich isn't standard — it comes from a company called New School American cheese and "is about four times more expensive" than typical options, Odell notes — but also many times better.
Our current favorites: the pastrami-spiced lox and the Calabrian chile and garlic cream cheese. Soon, look for a hamachi sandwich to join the lineup, the quality of which Odell says is comparable to good sushi (which makes sense, given his background in Japanese cuisine).
Rosenberg's: The Classic East Coast Experience
This was the first spot to really up the bagel game in the metro area when it debuted in Five Points a decade ago. While the system that's supposed to mimic NYC water is a common talking point, what really sets it apart is the passion that East Coast native Joshua Pollack brings to the product.
"A bagel and lox is my favorite thing to eat but it takes a lot to uphold the integrity of what the sandwich deserves," he says. "There’s a big difference in making something from scratch, sourcing high quality and sustainability, versus buying a mass-produced product."
Rosenberg's is about to launch an expanded house-cured fish program. "Our fish comes in fresh (never frozen) from sustainable farms or fisheries across the globe," Pollack notes. "We order Thursday and receive our fish by Sunday. The fish is only out of the water for 48 to 72 hours before we put it on brine or dry cure. The brining and curing process takes about five days, and the fish loses about 30 percent of its weight in the curing process. After the fish is rinsed, it has to dry for another five days and then it’s either smoked or topped with herbs and spices. ...It takes about two weeks and a lot of man-hours throughout the whole process and is a big labor of love for us. We feel we have some of the best in house cured and smoked fish on the planet."
Similarly, the bagels "take a good amount of time and man-hours to make. This is a 72-hour process of mixing, forming, cold-fermenting, boiling, seeding and baking fresh all day long," Pollack adds.
Rosenberg's is also the only place in town where you can get an egg everything bagel.
Call Your Mother: The Trendy Choice
Founded in D.C., this small but growing chain chose Denver for its expansion and has quickly grown to four metro locations with another set to open this year inside Denver Central Market.
It might be easy to scoff at the pink-and-blue aprons and funky bagel characters that adorn the menu, but to write this place off as trendy with no substance is a mistake.
The brand combines Andrew Dana's memories of classic Jewish delis with wife Daniela Moreira's Argentinian touch and plenty of modern whimsy. The result is equally fun and tasty. Don't skip the Don Caesar, a chicken Caesar bagel with Parmesan crisps, and the chocolate babka muffins.
Rich Spirit: Top Quality
Like Miles Odell, Rich Spirit and Bakery Four owner Shawn Bergin is obsessed with high-quality ingredients — and it shows. He's been making his naturally leavened bagels in Denver since he launched Bakery Four out of its original Highland home in 2020.
The time and care he has put into developing his recipe and perfecting it with the equipment at the new Rich Spirit space is apparent. The product is what bagel dreams are made of — crisp on the outside, chewy inside and super flavorful. The cream cheese is top-notch, too, and the lox option is a hell of a deal. "We don't make much money on it but the quality and consistency is the best I've found," Bergin notes of the product he's using from Spence & Co.
The only downside about Rich Spirit is that it's in Wheat Ridge...and our office isn't.
