Denver's Bagel Revolution Continues With Rich Spirit

It's been a decade since Joshua Pollack opened Rosenberg's, which quickly became the local gold standard for people craving East Coast-style bagels. After that, not much changed in the Mile High's bagel scene for a long time — until last year, when Call Your Mother chose Denver for its first expansion outside of the D.C. area. Call Your Mother's inaugural location on Tennyson Street drew long lines of diners hungry for a fresh take on bagels, and it has since added outposts in Capitol Hill and the Hilltop neighborhood.

Now there's another new bagel option in town, rolling off an earlier effort by Shawn Bergin and his wife, Alex Urdanick. The couple moved from New York to Denver in 2019, launching Bakery Four in the Highland neighborhood before moving the operation into a much larger space on Tennyson in 2022.

One of the items that proved popular at the bakery was its sourdough bagels — they even earned our pick for Best Bagels in the 2022 edition of Best of Denver. Late that year, Bergin announced plans to open a new business devoted to bagels, and now Rich Spirit is here.

The name comes from a song on Kendrick Lamar's newest album. "I just love the song, and the theme of the song just kind of always stuck in my head — it's kind of about letting go of the materialistic things and staying true to your spirit and who you are, which is what this is all about," Bergin says.
The shop is located at Gold's Marketplace in Wheat Ridge, in the former home of Little Brazil (that business relocated and will debut in its new, larger home soon), but rather than opening for walk-ins right away, Bergin is taking things slowly.

Rich Spirit offers cream cheese, lox and bagels by the dozen and half-dozen via pre-orders that drop every Sunday, with pickup slots available Thursday through Sunday. The process is simple for guests: You just select the type of bagels and add-ons for the pickup time that works best, show up, grab your bag and go. "It's a much more accessible way for people to get what they want without having to guess what we have left or having to wait in line for fifteen, twenty minutes," Bergin says.

The bagels themselves are downright delicious. "I can't call it a New York-style bagel, because it's not what we grew up eating, but we try to stick to all the same principles and ingredients but do it naturally leavened," Bergin explains. "It's kind of a hybrid of what is now the California-style bagel, which is naturally leavened, really fresh ingredients, really good flour, and then the principles of New York-style bagels, like using the malt in the dough and in the water, and sticking to that long fermentation."

That's the same method Bergin was using when he was making the bagels at Bakery Four, but now he has the right equipment to make them in larger quantities and with even better results. "Now we can boil forty to sixty at a time as opposed to eight or ten," he says. "We're using the same flour — Cairnspring — and the same hydration. ... The ovens we have at the bakery are very specific for pastry. They're a much gentler oven. These ovens blast heat a little bit better, which is better for what we're trying to do — the crust that we want to get, and then keeping them soft on the inside."

The bagels are currently available in five flavors: classic, sesame sea salt, poppy, salt and the most popular so far, everything, which is generously coated in a custom seasoning blend. Bergin is working on more options, although "sweet flavors don't really pair well with the sourness of the bagel," he notes. "Hopefully, we'll be able to do a cinnamon swirl or blueberry. I just haven't been able to nail it down yet."

While Bergin was making his own cream cheese at Bakery Four for a bit, he's now using Gina Marie Cream Cheese from Sierra Nevada Cheese Company. "It's the best cream cheese that I've ever had," he says. "It's really old-fashioned. It comes really grainy, so we mix it with milk a little bit to thin it out and whip it up a little, and then we add all our own blends to it" to create the veggie, chive and lox flavors. Shaved lox is also available as an add-on, as is Isigny, the high-quality butter that Bergin uses for the pastries at Bakery Four.

When Rich Spirit does open for walk-in business, there will be counter seating and a few bistro tables in the space, which is outfitted with a garage door that will be opened when the weather is nice. Guests will be able to get single schmear sandwiches with cream cheese and lox — but don't expect hot bagel sandwiches.
"That's just not something that we're set up to do, for one," Bergin says. "Also, we're just trying to focus on cream cheese and bagels." But he's looking into opportunities to sell his bagels wholesale to other eateries that would use them for hot sandwiches.

The bagel shop is a concept that might expand one day, as well. "This is going to be a much more replicable venture," Bergin says, comparing it to Bakery Four. "Also, we do have the ability to make a lot here, so the opportunity to open a location where we can take bagels from here to somewhere else is pretty big."

With bagel production moving to the new shop, Bakery Four fans have been wondering when that spot will begin carrying the popular item again. "We're gonna bring them over there at some point," Bergin promises. "As soon as we figure out demand and quantities over here."

Rich Spirit isn't the only new bagel concept on a roll. Another bakery, Good Bread on East Colfax, recently added sourdough bagels as a staple in its weekend lineup. They are also available at Lula Rose General Store across the street.

Last summer, New Jersey native Miles Odell made a big splash with his naturally leavened bagels at the Highlands Square Farmers Market, and he won the Staff Pick award at Rebel Bread's inaugural Denver Bake Fest in October; he's also been selling them at a series of pop-ups. This spring, he'll open Odell's Bagels in the former Denver Bread Co. space at 3200 Irving Street.

"It's like a rising-tide-raises-all-ships kind of thing," Bergin says of the current bagel boom. "When I opened [Bakery Four], Reunion and Babettes and Moxie were the only bakeries in town that were doing anything like long fermentation, dark loaves, really good pastries. Now it's like, Good Bread opened, Black Box, GetRight's, Petunia, and there's probably a dozen more. It's the same with bagels.

"I think everybody is better for it, and it makes people want to work harder and do even better, which is awesome. The more there are, the better everything is going to be."

Rich Spirit is located at 10081 West 26th Avenue. For more information and to place a pre-order for pickup, visit richspiritbagels.com.