The New Daily Bagel
309 S. Washington SqaureThe Lansing State-Journal just had a great opinion piece about the liveliness of downtown Lansing. J and I lived there for a couple of years in the late aughts and I always thought downtown Lansing was….dead. I worked for the Lansing Lugnuts for a season and there wasn’t really much around the game at that time. I’d go to The Nuthouse occasionally with some of the older players on the team after games but there really wasn’t any place to grab a quick bite to eat before or after games and even the bar scene was sparse.
I don’t end up in downtown Lansing a lot anymore but every so often, I am there for work….and I’m always annoyed about how little there is to eat. There are some chain quick service places downtown but local restaurants are still kind of sparse. There are a couple of sit down places but not really any place to grab a quick sandwich.
I had to run to Lansing before I went to work one day last week. I had a couple of things to take care of near the Capitol then I was heading home to take a quick nap before my afternoon shift started.
I did a quick drive down Washington Square to see if there was anything new.
There wasn’t that I could see but there is a place that has been there for a while that I always overlook. It’s a little bit further away from the Capitol complex so you kind of have to be intentional to find it.
The New Daily Bagel is on Washington Square and Washtenaw Street in downtown Lansing. The restaurant takes up the bottom floor of a two story building near the intersection. I had to go back and check my old blog to see if I had ever stopped in this place for lunch and for some reason, it doesn’t look like I ever did.
The shop is pretty much a little deli. It’s not very big but it’s a place that doesn’t need to be.
There’s an order counter at the back of the room. The menu is hanging next to the entrance to the kitchen. There are a lot of bagel sandwich options including breakfast all day but there’s also some typical deli sandwiches as well. The case next to the register is full of cream cheese spreads for their bagels which you can order the Baker’s Dozen and take them back to the office if you want to be that person.
There’s a decent size dining room in the building I was in Lansing on a Monday so there wasn’t a lot of activity at the Capitol and not a lot of activity downtown but there were other groups of people from nearby businesses sitting down for lunch.
I can always go for a bagel breakfast sandwich but the #6 Super Pastrami specialty sandwich is the one that called my name.
This sandwich is double pastrami, double Swiss, and a spicy mustard on Jewish rye bread. The sandwich is grilled because hot pastrami is just better.
There is a lot of meat on this sandwich. It’s not quite New York deli big but it’s bigger than most places. The pastrami is piled on and held together with the Swiss cheese that had melted it’s way through the meat. The sandwich was definitely tasty. I didn’t eat it right away because I didn’t want to get mustard on my shirt like I usually do. I ate it about half way back to Kalamazoo which I couldn’t take the smell anymore and just had to dive in.
The cost of the sandwich was right around $11.
Whenever I complain about there not being anything quick to eat in downtown Lansing that isn’t a chain, please remind me The New Daily Bagel exists. This is the kind of place that every downtown needs. The sandwiches are delicious and they’re quick to make.
SW Michigan Dining 