Kettleman's Bagel Company in Ottawa

Ottawa · 22 Dec 2019

Somehow it has taken 22 years for one of my best friends, Tanya Haddad, and I to properly discuss our love of bagels. I seriously wish this post was a podcast because a podcast would have better captured our passion and enthusiasm (not to mention our witty banter). We had the best time eating four different bagels with four different spreads at the Trainyards location of Kettleman’s Bagel Company in Ottawa.

Random note: The wrapping paper is so cute

Everything bagel with plain cream cheese

Tanya and I wanted to start off on a high note, so we tried our favourite type of bagel first: the everything bagel. The dominant flavours of this everything bagel were sesame and poppy. I think we were both a bit surprised that the poppy seeds came out so strongly because we didn’t see as many as we had hoped for in our initial visual assessment. The bagel is seasoned all over on both sides though, which we really appreciated. The bagel had a good mouthfeel and a good amount of chewiness. The cream cheese was really smooth. I tasted peppercorn in a couple of bites, which added a very nice kick to the flavour profile. Tanya’s rating was 8/10 and I agree with a 4/5 (to be consistent with my 5-star/bagel rating scale).

Pumpernickel bagel with butter

Next, we went with a pumpernickel bagel with butter. We went with butter instead of a cream cheese because someone had told Tanya that butter was the best pairing for pumpernickel specifically - also, when has someone not liked butter, right? Tanya and I were pretty intrigued by the sesame on half of the bagel. We felt like this was a pretty cool aesthetic. This pumpernickel bagel was much doughier compared to the everything bagel. The sesame seasoned side was the tastiest part. We gave this bagel 3 bagels out of 5.

Onion bagel with veggie spread

This bagel didn’t have much flavour to it. Tanya said “might as well have been a plain bagel”. We both felt the spread was the best part. It was quite flavourful and had a lot of veggies in it (sadly I don’t have a close up of the spread). We gave this bagel a 2 out of 5 because we wanted more onion flavour.

Sesame bagel with all dressed cream cheese

Our last bagel was a classic sesame bagel. We paired this bagel with an all dressed cream cheese. I wrote in my notes at first that this bagel had a very good sesame flavour. However, I think “very good” was a bit of an understatement because my next note said “one of the best sesame bagels I’ve ever had” and Tanya agreed 100%. So I’m going to say this is an excellent sesame bagel. The all dressed cream cheese was a bit more savoury than the plain cream cheese and a bit creamier. I’m not really sure what ingredients are in the all dressed cream cheese, but we identified poppy seeds. We gave this bagel a 5 out of 5. The sesame bagel was an amazing bagel and I’m very pleased we ended on such a great bagel.

Conclusion

Here was our final ranking for these 4 bagels:

1. Sesame
2. Everything
3. Pumpernickel
4. Onion

Sesame was the best flavour and we felt that any bagel that didn’t have any sesame could be better (or CBB, a technical term in Tanya’s work in animation).

Also here is a photo of the best Christmas tree I’ve ever seen, which was standing at the front of the bagel shop.

Kettleman’s Bagel Company offers high quality bagels with a standout sesame bagel. They also offer a ton of different cream cheeses and spreads. Their bagel shop is a 5/5.

Thanks to Tanya for being the best bagel partner in crime. One of my favourite moments was when we were looking at the different cream cheeses. Tanya saw a cheddar cream cheese and her reaction was “cream cheese already has one type of cheese in there - why complicate things with a second cheese??”. And that was the moment where I wished this could have been a podcast episode.