601 K Street, NW
“Dear PoPville,
In clearly the most important news in the District, H&H Bagels opened on K Street, near Shouk. I got out early from jury duty, and stopped by to give it a try.
Bottom line grade: C+ (just barely passing)
Cred: Amid a lifetime of bagel consumption, I was a semi-regular at the H&H on Broadway, on the Upper West Side.
Pluses:
When I got to the front of the line, I asked if they had any bagels still warm from the oven. At the UWS H&H, everyone would just ask, “what’s hot?”, but I didn’t know if they’d recognize the question here. To the guy’s credit, he got what I meant, and knew the status of the oven, and started to say, “not yet”, when they brought out a basket with piping hot bagels! I got an Everything. It was fresh and hot.
The rest:
The bagel itself was *so bland*. Just no flavor or taste at all.
Somehow, the “everything” topping was also completely tasteless, how do you even do that?
The texture is acceptable, but nothing special. Kinda chewy, not dense enough.
My standard test for a new bagel place is a salt bagel, toasted with butter, to just focus on the flavor of the bagel. But they don’t have salt! Or garlic. But they do have blueberry…
The only way to make sense of it, is that they view a bagel as a neutral carrier for something flavorful inside. And some kind of (pork) spicy sausage seemed to be the hot option, judging from the other orders while I was in line — definitely not what you’d see at the (kosher-supervised) Upper West Side bagel shop.
The District has many better options (call-out for my favorite, Yael’s), H&H isn’t worth a visit.
P.S. I’d tried to stop by at 4pm the previous day, just as they were closing. They offered me a free muffin from a tray they were disposing of. Which was very nice of them — but it was *also* bland, and had a somewhat similar texture. I fear they use the same dough for both.”