Kettleman’s Bagel Co. reopens in the Glebe

Kettleman's bakers will roll more than 6,000 bagels a day during the week and more than 12,000 on on the weekends.

The bagels are baking in the wood oven at Kettleman’s Bagel Co. again, six weeks after the store closed for extensive renovations.

“We’re still not finished, but at least we can operate,” says co-owner Craig Buckley pointing to the ceiling, where wires and pipes have yet to be covered up with new ceiling tiles.

The open ceiling doesn’t seem to bother fourteen-year-old Owen Henderson.  For him, the re-opening could not have come sooner.

“I missed bagels, I didn’t have bagels in my lunch for a very long time,” he says as he waits for his order, a poppy seed bagel with cream cheese. Henderson and his friends are regulars, stopping by the shop for an after-school snack three or four times a week.

Located at the corner of Bank Street and Henderson Avenue, Buckley and co-owner Joe Bianchini founded the popular bagel shop in 1993. Open 24 hours, seven days a week, the neighbourhood bagel shop, famous for its variety of bagels and cream cheeses, had never been renovated, until now. To hear Craig Buckley talk about Kettleman’s role in the Glebe click here: “Traditionally a restaurant is renovated every five to seven years,” Buckley explains. ” We were eighteen years into it. We needed to [renovate]”

“We gutted the place.”

Gone are the old counter tops; worn out floor; and dingy washrooms. Even the shop’s mainstay, the large, wood burning, baking oven was upgraded to a hotter, more efficient model.

The new oven was a necessary change, says Baker Reed Dhaliwal. “It makes much better bagels,” he explains as he rolls out a batch of pumpernickel dough.

An employee at Kettleman’s Bagel Co. for three years, Dhaliwal says he makes more than 6,000 bagels on a given weekday and more than 12,000 on the weekends. With the new oven, he expects those numbers to rise.

That means more bagels for Henderson and his friends to eat. “When Kettleman’s was closed, I was hungry after school,” says Graham Connell, 15. “I’d try and get home from school as fast as possible and get something to eat. Now, I can just come here.”

If all goes according to plan, the interior renovations should be complete in the next couple of weeks, says Buckley. Exterior renovations are scheduled for this coming spring, and will include a new patio.

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