Bagel Street Deli was voted as February's Restaurant of the Month. Once a restaurant is featured, it is taken off of the list for future polls.
It takes about three minutes for a Bagel Street Deli worker to make one of the 73 different bagel sandwiches offered there. For those who frequent the establishment, it is well worth the wait.
In a poll conducted by The Post for February’s Restaurant of the Month contest, 36 people voted for Bagel Street Deli to be featured out of 186, beating Casa Nueva by nine votes. The poll opened Feb. 8 and was ran for 10 days through The Post’s website.
Bagel Street Deli opened in 1993, but switched owners off and on until Lenny and Megan Meyer purchased the restaurant in 2003. Both Lenny and Megan are both full-time teachers.
“We didn't want to see the Bagel Street Deli ‘feeling’ leave Athens when the previous owners wanted to leave town,” Megan said in an email. “The employees of BSD have always been a close knit group … and honestly, we had strong attachment to both the essence of the shop and the people who worked there.”
Megan has been a vegetarian for more than 20 years and said she makes sure Bagel Street Deli has many vegetarian and vegan options for customers.
“I know how challenging it can be to find quality vegetarian fare that can be accessed quickly,” Megan said in an email. “We hope that we offer a variety of bagelwiches, which are of high quality, that people can feel good about eating.”
The food comes from a variety of places, manager Lori Linnevers said. The bagels come from Sammy’s New York Bagels and Block’s Hot Bagels in Columbus as well as Gordon Food Service. Bagel Street Deli’s focaccia bread comes from local establishments, Jackie O’s Bakeshop and Crumb’s Bakery.
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Linnevers, who earned her master’s in social criminology at OU, has been managing Bagel Street Deli for 15 years. Linnevers said Athens is a tight-knit, sustainable-focused town that has many restaurants that use local food.
“We work hard on introducing more locally produced things as much as we can,” Linnevers said. “It’s a slow process. We like to support the community. It’s the farmer-to-fork mentality that we totally support. We try to employ it as much as we can.”
During spring break, Bagel Street Deli will discuss switching to a local meat supplier. It currently gets its meat from Gordon Food Service, but hopes to switch to RL Valley Ranch in Athens, Linnevers said.
“It is important to support our local farmers and community and we know it's better overall for the environment as well,” Megan said in an email. “We know that customers want to eat locally and we hope to bring even more choices to the shop in the future.”
Sawyer Summers, an employee who has worked at Bagel Street Deli for two years, said he likes the family aspect of Bagel Street Deli.
“Everyone here’s really close,” Summers said. “We all get along.”
Summers favorite bagel is the Flaming Moe, which is a turkey sandwich priced at $6.50. The bagel has turkey, spicy cream cheese, onions, banana peppers and provolone cheese.
Linnevers said trying to pick a favorite bagel is like trying to pick a favorite Beatles song.
“We’re one big family,” Linnevers said. “We do everything together. These kids all study together, eat together, party together. … Every new person that comes here I tell them in two weeks these people are going to be your best friends.”
One customer said her favorite sandwich is the BLT bagel.
“(Bagel Street Diner) is great,” Lillie Combs, a freshman studying East Asian Studies, said. “I know the person who owns it because he used to be my high school history teacher, and he brought in a lot of bagels. I go there all the time.”
Linnevers said customers like Bagel Street Deli for its laidback atmosphere.
“Our employees are always having a lot of fun while they’re working,” Linnevers said. “There’s always music playing. Laid back. It’s not the rigidness you would get when you walked into Chipotle.”
Megan said Bagel Street Deli plans to add a second cash register for busy weekends and wants to continue serving Athens residents and OU students.
“We like to think we are not ‘good, fast food’, we are ‘good food, fast,’ Megan said in an email. “We aspire to provide quality food, in a relaxed atmosphere, at a decent pace and price!”
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