Order Like a Local: Village Bagel

The best bagel in the Vail Valley owes its existence to a homesick moment in the middle of New York's busiest train station.

In the fall of 2016, Connie Mazza was back East visiting family, working through a bagel at Penn Station, when it hit her: there was nothing like this waiting for her back in the mountains. No corner bakery. No warm Saturday-morning bag. No real bagel at all. So she did what any self-respecting New Yorker would do. She called her boyfriend, a chef named Anthony, and complained about it at length.

When she got home to Colorado, there was a single poppy seed bagel sitting on a plate in their kitchen. Anthony ("Tone" to his friends) had baked it himself. That was the first Village Bagel. Connie married the guy, and the rest of us got breakfast.

Village Bagel didn't open with a ribbon cutting. For about a year, Connie and Anthony baked in borrowed kitchen space at Mirabelle in Beaver Creek and sold bagels by the dozen out of the restaurant's back door in the early mornings. Locals called it "Back Door Bagels," and you had to know someone to know about it.

The Edwards shop opened in 2018 with a 25-gallon kettle shipped straight from New York City. That kettle matters. Village Bagel is the only operation in Eagle County making bagels the traditional way: six ingredients, hand-rolled (so no two look alike), boiled, then baked. That's what gives you the chewy inside and the crackly crust that a grocery-store bagel can only dream about.

The room itself is pure East Coast diner, with bright red banquettes and chrome stools. The awards wall includes Best Breakfast and Best Baked Goods from Best of Vail, a USA Today feature and a spot on Eater Denver's essential Vail-area restaurants. The Infatuation put it best: if you walk in and there's no line, buy a lottery ticket.

The menu is long, the line is moving and the person behind you knows exactly what they want. Here's how to sound like you've been coming for years.

Start where Connie started. The owner's own order is scallion shmear and sliced tomatoes on a poppy seed bagel. Same bagel that started it all, ten years later.

Go big like the chef. Anthony's pick is Hatch green chile shmear, bacon and tomato on an Everything. If you only try one shmear, make it the Hatch green chile. It shows up in more staff favorites than anything else on the board.

The house specials locals actually order:

Steal an order from the crew. The staff favorites list on Village Bagel's website is a treasure map. A few worth trying:

•       The sweet-and-savory gamble: honey rosemary shmear on a chocolate chip bagel. Sounds wrong. Isn't.

•       The kitchen-sink: fried egg, chipotle gouda, hummus, Hatch green chile shmear, arugula and hot sauce on sesame.

•       The manager's move: the L.E.O. on a sesame bagel.

Local vocabulary. It's a shmear, not cream cheese. A baker's dozen is 13. And if someone says VB2, they mean the Gypsum shop.

Skip the line in Gypsum. The second shop, opened in July 2023 out by the airport, has a drive-up pickup window. Order and pay in the Toast app, pull around to the south side of the building and you're off without leaving the car. Flying out of Eagle County Regional? This is your last real bagel before the TSA line. Every bagel is still baked in the big rotating deck oven in Edwards and driven to Gypsum fresh each morning.

Pizza for breakfast is allowed. The Edwards shop bakes scratch Sicilian pies by the jumbo slice or the whole pie. The cult favorite is the pepperoni roll: think pepperoni pizza rolled up, egg-washed and dusted with everything seasoning. Add a fried egg to any slice for $3 and call it brunch.

Make it a bubbly morning. Edwards also pours fresh-squeezed mimosas, Irish coffee and Vail Brewing Company beer. The power move is the bottle of bubbly, which comes with a pint of fresh OJ. (Booze and pizza are Edwards-only.)

Feed the whole house. Hosting family for the holidays or a group in a vacation rental? Village Bagel's platters serve 13 and deliver to Edwards, Avon and Vail ($10) or Eagle and East Vail ($15). The Smoked Salmon Platter is the crowd-pleaser. Give them 72 hours' notice, longer during peak weeks.

Take the fish home. Cold smoked salmon and smoked trout are sold by the pound to go, and you can grab a loaf of house challah or a half dozen rugelach on the way out.

Bagels run $2.25 each ($3.25 for specialty flavors), $12 a half dozen or $20 for a baker's dozen. Cash and debit skip the 3% card fee.

And if you like the family's style, they also run the historic Minturn Saloon, built in 1901, and Colorado Angling Company, which guides fly fishing trips on the Eagle, Colorado and Roaring Fork rivers. Bagels in the morning, a trout in the afternoon and a margarita in Minturn by dinner. That's a pretty good Vail Valley day.