Rosenberg’s Bagels Brings a Taste of New York to Stapleton and Aurora

Two years after signing a lease at Stanley Marketplace, this past weekend Joshua Pollack opened the second installment of Rosenberg's Bagels & Delicatessen in that complex, where it will cater to the bagel lovers of Stapleton and Aurora.

“I always try to find neighborhoods where the community really needs something like what we do," explains Pollack, owner and bagel master at Rosenberg’s, which opened its first location at 725 East 26th Avenue three years ago.  "When we went to Five Points, the Welton corridor was pretty much vacant; they had over 50 percent vacancy in the storefronts and a lot of boarded-up windows and things like that, but the residential community surrounding it was pretty strong.”

The residents of Five Points didn’t have many options for breakfast and lunch, he found, and Rosenberg’s aimed to fill that niche.
“When Stanley was presented to me, it was kind of the same thing: We had an interesting mix of demographics, being that Stapleton is more high-end households, but then in Aurora, you have your working-class, blue-collar families,” he explains. “It’s a similar thing, where there’s a ton of residential, but there isn’t really any retail.”

Rosenberg’s at the Stanley serves up the same menu as the original Five Points location, plus an assortment of new snacks, pastries and sandwiches. One of the new sandwiches is the Leo, an off-menu breakfast favorite consisting of smoked salmon and red onions griddled up with scrambled eggs on a bagel of your choice. Cream cheese is strongly suggested, Pollack says.

The other new breakfast sandwich is Wings of Pastrami, a reference to one of Pollack’s favorite Seinfeld episodes. The sandwich is stacked with house-braised pastrami scrambled with eggs and a three-cheese blend and served omelet-style on a bagel of your choice.

If fish is more your style, this Rosenberg’s will soon add the sturgeon BLT that's so popular in Five Points.

In addition to a wraparound patio where patrons can enjoy their meals, this second Rosenberg’s features an expanded retail section where it sells such goodies as housemade bagel chips in three flavors, plenty of pastries, and specialty items from the East Coast. Rosenberg’s is in the midst of procuring a supply of Mallomars, Pollack says, and will offer six- and twelve-packs of Dr. Brown’s sodas. It will also carry Jewish groceries, including matzo for the holidays and Shabbat candles.

The deli case will offer deli meats and cheeses for sale by the pound, including in-house corned beef and pastrami, as well as deli classics like chicken salad, tuna salad and egg salad. “The way we set the space up, we definitely have more of that deli feel,” says Pollack. “We have a fish-slicing case so that you can see us hand-slicing the fish and try different types before you purchase.”

Within the next year, Rosenberg’s at the Stanley hopes to expand into dinner service by plating food and introducing a cocktail list, wine list and waitstaff during the evenings. For now, the new bagelry and deli will be open Tuesday through Sunday from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m.