Bagel Kitchen Westside
Early morning work shifts. I hate getting up for them but I do like that it gives me an opportunity to get out for breakfast.
I’m usually exhausted by the weekend. If we have nothing to get up for, I literally don’t. I’ll sleep in pretty late and wake up past time to go out for breakfast.
This past weekend, I had to work in Grand Rapids pretty early in the morning. My shift got over around 10:00 AM and as I was packing up to leave, I decided to look for someplace to grab a sandwich.
I was actually leaning towards a deli on the Beltline but luckily I checked the hours before I headed out there. They weren’t open on Saturday.
So, I just went to my go to and typed “bagel” in to Google. I came up with a couple of places I’ve never heard of and that’s good enough for me to go on an adventure.
Bagel Kitchen has two locations in Grand Rapids. One of them is in Gaslight Village near East Grand Rapids High School. That was kind of far from where I was but the other location is on the Westside of Grand Rapids on Leonard Street near Hamilton Avenue not far from the US-131 interchange. It was a little out of my way too but it was right off 131 so I headed there to find the shop in two story brick building that had been abandoned for a couple of years. Prior to the bagel shop, it was a drape shop and prior to that, it was a Halloween costume shop (but not a Spirit Halloween). The bagel shop on the westside is the second location for the husband and wife team that started making bagels while they lived in Costa Rica. They opened the EGR spot in 2021 and this one in late 2024.
The shop is pretty large with a lot of open space. It’s really bright with light colored wood floors that reflect the light coming in from the large picture windows that face Leonard Street as well as smaller windows that look out to a vacant lot to the west. The color scheme is kept pretty neutral with off white walls, light wood furniture and a mix of blues and greens for the furniture.
There’s also a coffee shop style lounge area with a couple of chairs to wait if you’re grabbing to go and a bright leafy logo mural painted on the wall.
The order counter is kind of in the back of the space. It’s pretty simple with the menu boards for sandwiches and drinks hanging from the wall. Pretty much all of the assembling of orders is done right at that counter. There’s a bagel slicer, a toaster oven and a work space off to one side. The drink stations are off to the other. I’m not a coffee drinker at all so I didn’t even look at that side of the menu.
The bagels are laid out in wire baskets behind a glass wall right next to the cash register. They had eight flavors on display when I got there around 10:30 AM on a Saturday. The Everything bin was really low but I peaked around the parchment paper lining the trays to see there were a couple left.
I put in an order for the Bellclaire sandwich with bacon. All of the sandwiches are named after streets and local landmarks. The Bellclaire is named after Bellclaire Avenue SW in East Grand Rapids. It’s a small residential street off Lake Drive southeast of the high school. I’m sure it has some significance in the owner’s lives but there’s nothing else that would really warrant a sandwich being named after this random street.
The cost for the sandwich was a little over $9 and it took about five minutes for it to be bagged up and for my name to be called.
The Bellclaire is the classic BEC sandwich (although you can get it with sausage, chorizo, ham, or turkey if you’d rather.). All bacon and egg and cheese bagel sandwiches are pretty much the same and it’s something that’s really hard to mess up. What makes each one unique is the bagel is served on. I typically go for the Everything Bagel which is exactly what I did here. The bagel was a little bit salty, a little bit oniony and a whole lot of delicious. I’ve written so many times about how I hate onions so it’s a little weird that I love Everything Bagels so much but I’m not going to question it. This sandwich was delicious and exactly what I needed after a morning of work running on fumes from a lack of sleep and Pepsi.
I love little bagel places like this. I tend to seek them out when I travel for a quick, delicious breakfast. Why hit the McDonalds drive thru when you can get something so much better? Bagel Kitchen is a spot I have never heard of before and a place I found by accident…a happy little accident.
SW Michigan Dining 