Not long after Einstein Noah Restaurant Group shuttered Southeast Portland's original Kettleman Bagel Co. store, Michael Madigan inquired about taking over the lease, hoping to use the large production kitchen hidden in the back to help grow his fledgling bakery, Bowery Bagels.

"It was trashed," Madigan recalled last week. "That April, Einstein had said, 'We're closing,' then turned out the lights. The employees just walked away. There was spoiled food stored in fridges that had been unplugged for months."

In Portland, the dismantling of Kettleman was greeted with the kind of outrage and anguish typically reserved for a passing head of state. A post on Oregonlive.com about the

drew 70 comments, most lamenting the perceived death of the city's de facto best bagel.

Tastebud bagels.

Yet in the year and a half since the remaining Kettleman stores were rebranded as Einstein Bros (two were eventually closed), the void it left behind for fans of New York-style boiled-and-baked bagels has drawn more than a dozen smaller bakers to the market. There's a wider variety of traditional, hand-crafted bagels in Portland today than ever before.

That roster includes the crusty, sourdough-flavored bagels at Southeast Portland's Spielman, the old-school New York bagels of Madigan's Bowery, the top-notch wholesalers Blackheart and Henry Higgins Boiled Bagels, and older bagel makers that have slowly ramped up production, including Tastebud, with its "Montreal-style" bagels, and the malt-bathed classics from Kenny & Zuke's Delicatessen. It's enough to make even the most curmudgeonly of ex-New Yorkers happy.

. . .



The best bagel you've never heard of comes from a bright yellow cart parked in Northeast Portland's Rose City food cart pod.

Jon Park, the 38-year-old co-owner of Bridgetown Bagel Co., credits Kettleman founder Jeffrey Wang with teaching him how to bake. Back in 2007, Park was hired at Kettleman just as Wang, a former New York bagel maker recently transplanted to Portland, was launching his bagel business using funds he solicited on Craigslist.

As Kettleman

, Park became both head baker and general manager. "After it was sold, I didn't know what to do," he says.

Eventually, he teamed up with a friend, Matt Kincaid, and together they opened Bridgetown in March. Inside the cramped cart, Park rolls, proofs, boils and bakes each of his bagels using a tweaked version of a recipe he developed at Kettleman. At full bore, Park estimates he can make about 300 a day.

Michael Russell's ideal half-dozen

Bridgetown Bagel Co.

plain bagel, pulled fresh from the cart's oven and loaded with cream cheese. (Northeast Sandy Boulevard at 52nd Avenue, 503-268-2522,

)

The dense, delectable salt bagel from

Bowery Bagels.

Buttered. (310 N.W. Broadway, 503-227-6674,

)

A sesame bagel with cream cheese from micro-baker Hungry Hutch and the Family Dog. Found them at North Portland's

Red E Cafe

(1006 N. Killingsworth St.).

A sourdough-flavored salt-and-pepper bagel from

Spielman

. Best as part of a lox plate. (2128 S.E. Division St., 503-467-0600,

)

An obsidian-black pumpernickel bagel still warm from

Kenny & Zuke's Bagelworks

. With the deli's outstanding house-made cream cheese. (2376 N.W. Thurman St., 503-954-1737,

)

And an everything bagel, bought early in the day, from the

Tastebud

stall. Owner Mark Doxtader calls his smaller-sized bagels "Montreal-style" (at various Portland farmers markets; check

for locations).

When it comes to bagels, quality is often in the eye of the beholder. But great versions have a few things in common: dough that has good "pull" or "chew"; a flavor balancing salt and sweet; and a shiny crust that's not too pale and cracks lightly when pressed. Yet even the best bagels diminish over time; baking fresh throughout the morning and early afternoon is part of Bridgetown's allure.

. . .



When Rick Spielman opened his namesake cafe on Southeast Division Street in 2011, he brought the bagels he made at Hillsboro's Java Mama cafe with him (the coffee shop continues to make bagels as well).

Spielman's bagels are unique, using both a sourdough starter and honey instead of malt as a sweetener. "It might be arrogant to call them 'Portland-style,' but they are different," Spielman says. "They're not oriented toward New York, they're oriented toward the cuisine of Portland."

They've grown a strong following, but with competition from Kettleman just a dozen blocks away, he figured he'd sell maybe a few dozen a day.

Today, Spielman rents commissary kitchen space nearby, averaging closer to 500 bagels a day. He recently took over the former Twill clothing boutique next door and plans to expand his cafe and coffee roastery. His bagels are already found in several local cafes and in the Pearl District's Local Choice Produce Market. When Lisa Sedlar, former CEO of New Seasons Market, opens her Green Zebra grocery stores in North and Southeast Portland, Spielman bagels will be on the shelf.

. . .



"We just walked past two bagel places here in Paris," says chef Ken Gordon, reached on his cellphone while on vacation in France. "The French do a lot of things amazingly well. Bagels are not one of them."

After Kettleman's closure, Gordon's Kenny & Zuke's, which has sold bagels since 2007, looked to be the local bagel heir apparent.

Today, Kenny & Zuke's head baker Melissa Martin and her team make about 1,500 bagels a day from the Kenny & Zuke's Bagelworks location on Northwest Thurman Street. There, bagels are hand rolled, proofed, given a dip in a boiling malt-and-water bath, lined on a rack and wheeled into a large oven. Some of these are bound for the deli's three locations. Other, 90-percent par-baked versions go to Whole Foods Market, which Gordon landed as a major account last year.

Gordon wonders how many of the new players will end up staying in the game.

"People get into it, then think, 'Oh, this isn't quite as profitable as we thought.' You've got to sell a lot of them to make money."

. . .



"Obviously, there are a lot of folks who have thrown their hats into the ring," Madigan says, echoing Gordon. "Some are better than others."

At about 4 ounces each, Bowery's bagels are smaller than the competition, designed to mimic the ones Madigan bought from a German bakery when he was growing up in Queens.

"Bagels are like pizza; your opinions are formed by your early childhood experience," he says. "It's all about these associated memories. I've been trying to re-create my memories of Glendale Bakery from when I was a boy. There are people who like the ones that come from Safeway wrapped in plastic for $1.99."

Over the past 18 months, Madigan has gone from giving away 180 free bagels at a pop-up event to baking about 3,000 bagels at his commissary kitchen each night. Bowery Bagels are found at dozens of local cafes and at New Seasons grocery stores. With his current equipment and space, Madigan thinks he can expand production to about 7,000 a day. But his immediate focus is on opening a few more retail shops over the next year.

"No one would have taken on Kettleman two years ago," he says. "That created the vacuum for all of us. I enjoy making bagels. We may have done the pop-ups. But I wouldn't have invested in a retail store or employed 24 people if Kettleman were still around."

. . .



Jon Park, owner of Bridgetown Bagel Co. shows off a garlic bagel loaded with cream cheese and lox from his Northeast Portland cart.

At the Bridgetown cart, Park's ambitions are more modest. A brick-and-mortar location isn't out of the question, but for now he and co-owner Kincaid have different visions.

Park wouldn't want to be the big bagel place in Portland. "For me, small but prosperous is better."

And Kincaid has always looked at the cart as a steppingstone to get bigger: "I want to make the next Kettleman."

Last Sunday, I stopped by their cart, bought a half-dozen assorted bagels and took them to a friend's house. Once there, I reached into the paper bag and pulled out a plain bagel, still warm. The caramel-colored crust crackled as I tore off a hunk, then and loaded it with cream cheese.

Like that half dozen, Portland's bagel renaissance might not last forever -- but for now, the future looks bright.

-- Michael Russell