Are Brooklyn’s rainbow bagels worth the hype?

For Scot Rossillo’s The Bagel Store, colorful bagels have recently been all the rage for many who want a taste of colorful dough. So many, in fact, that their main location on Bedford Ave has actually been closed until recently so that upgrades could be made to handle the demand.

For all the talk, when it reopened, I had to see what it was all about. Each rainbow bagel has to be hand rolled, meaning supplies are limited. Lines usually stretch around the block and can take up to two and a half hours. As for those bagels, they’re usually gone in just a few hours.

But when I got there at around 8 AM, here’s what the line looked like:

That’s definitely a long line

It seems as though the two plus hours lines don’t exist, or maybe I got lucky. But whatever.

To top it off, there’s no line inside either, only a large menu and pictures of some of what they provide (including the cragel). On the ordering side, on top of the fact that the rainbow bagels exist comes a whole list of cream cheeses. From standard to Nutella to birthday cake, the list is long enough to give pause. (By the way, like the employees suggest, get the bagel untoasted, the flavors that go in the rainbow bagels are better preserved this way).

I ask for a bacon and cheddar cream cheese rainbow bagel, and I had to wait was about 10 minutes. For something that sells out in just hours, I had it easy (this time).

Bacon and cheddar cream cheese and rainbow dough.

I shouldn’t be enjoying bagels this much

But I did enjoy that bagel as much as the latter picture suggests. It’s one thing to be eating something tasty, it’s another thing to be eating something that’s both tasty and looks awesome. And while bacon and cheddar isn’t nearly as colorful as birthday cake cream cheese, it was a lot tastier than such a cream cheese. There’s a lot of hype when it comes to rainbow bagels, but to explain it, it’s best to try it yourself.

So I will definitely be going back for seconds and giving myself a second dip at the cream cheese selection. While the cons include the L train and timing, it’s just that tasty, and definitely worthy of Instagram bragging points.