The second outpost of Shlok's Bagels & Lox softly opened Thursday morning in the Financial District, with a grand opening scheduled for Monday, August 11, and this time it's an actual shop you can walk into.
Yes, the still nascent San Francisco bagel scene has one more shop to add to its roster, as Shlok's Bagels & Lox debuts its second location at 315 California Street today. We first heard about plans for the second location back in February, with the five-year-old company having established itself first with a pickup window at 1263 Fell Street in 2022.
Now they've opened an actual, full-sized bagel shop in a former San Francisco Soup Company location. Shlok's joins rival Boichik Bagels downtown, with Boichik having opened their location at 22 Battery Street last year — bringing Shlok's to two locations in SF, and Berkeley-based Boichik to three.
While Boichik founder Emily Winston modeled her bagel recipe after the firmer, sweeter style favored by the likes of H&H Bagels in New York, Shlok's bagels are are on the more savory, yeasty, and puffier side of the spectrum, though still with a nice chew — and they crisp up well in the toaster too if you're not eating one fresh from the bagel oven.
Also unique to Schlok's: house-cured cold-smoked lox, and caper cream cheese.
Co-founder and bagel chef James Lok tells the Chronicle that the quality of Schlok's bagels has evolved and improved in the last couple of years, as he's determined the proper mineral balance for the water he boils his bagels in.
"It really is not a myth anymore,” Lok tells the paper, referring to the age-old refrain about how New York's water created superior bagels. "Inherently you do need to start with your medium, which is water."
Lok began testing and filtering the water to create the right balance of calcium, magnesium, and metallic ions, and he tells the Chronicle this gives the bagels their "toothsomeness" and "the sheen and the delicate, thin crisp texture of the crust."
Shlok's, which is an amalgam of Lok's name with co-founder Zack Schwab, was born like a number of Bay Area businesses out of pandemic boredom and experimentation. A bagel pop-up that the pair launched out of The Snug — which the pair also co-owns, along with nearby oyster spot Little Shucker — in the middle of 2020 became so popular that they soon began looking for a brick-and-mortar location, landing on a former dry-cleaner's shop on Fell Street. The bagel kitchen and its pair of windows, one for ordering and one for pickup, opened in early 2022.
Shlok's hadn't been around long enough to be included when the New York Times food critics made the earth-rattling declaration in March 2021 that "The Best Bagels Are In California (Sorry, New York)". That piece namechecked Boichik, along with LA-based Courage Bagels (they're delicious, you need to go), and Pop's Bagels.
But in the four years since that article came out, two of the SF bagel operations it mentioned are mostly defunct. Daily Driver, which began baking wood-fired, Montreal-style bagels in the summer of 2019 and closed permanently in December 2024. And Midnite Bagel, from former Tartine baker Nick Beitcher, went from pop-up and farmers' market stand to brick-and-mortar all too briefly in 2022 in the Inner Sunset, closing within six months — and while he may still make bagels, the Midnite website is now named Midnite Bakery, and refers only to Beitcher's loaves of bread.
Schlok's is left to battle for new-school California bagel supremacy with Boichik and Wise Sons, while the established brands continue to operate elsewhere in the city.
Old-school and somewhat maligned Noah's Bagel's still has four stores scattered around San Francisco, though its footprint has shrunk over the years. And The Posh Bagel, founded in Los Altos by Cambodian immigrant Anthony Lao in 1992, also has four locations in SF, and over a dozen around the Bay and Sacramento.
Schlok's Bagels & Lox - 315 California Street and 1263 Fell Street - California Street location softly open August 7 and 8, until bagels sell out
