AFTER SEVEN YEARS OF ROADBLOCKS, CLEO BAGELS FINALLY OPENS IN WEST PHILLY
There’s something about Cleo Bagels, the new neighborhood bagel shop just off West Philly’s Cedar Park, that feels peaceful. With morning light streaming through the big front window and calming shades of peach and mint green on the walls, you feel your jaw unclench, your shoulders relax. The backyard is a flower-filled brick patio where you can enjoy your bagel, coated top and bottom with toasty seeds, and sip a life-giving iced coffee away from the bustle of Baltimore Avenue.
By Alexandra Jones, For The Inquirer.
FROM POP-UP TO BRICK-AND-MORTAR, WEST PHILLY WELCOMES CLEO BAGELS
It’s possible you’re more familiar with Alex Malamy’s bagels under their original name, Dodo Bagels, a roving pop-up that gained traction as Philadelphia fell in love with Malamy’s surprising versions of bagel sandwiches, incorporating ingredients like lavender and togarashi. Bagel lovers will be pleased to know that Malamy has just opened a brick-and-mortar shop under his new name, Cleo Bagels, at 5013 Baltimore Avenue in West Philly.
A variety of bagels from West Philly’s new Cleo Bagels / Photograph courtesy of Cleo Bagels.
PHILLY’S BAGEL SCENE KEEPS GETTING BETTER. MEET ITS NEWEST BAKERS.
His sturdy, crisp-crusted bagel remixes New York, New Jersey, and Montreal styles. “It’s … a piece of my heritage,” the native New Yorker said. “I want to be making a bagel that feels traditional, but if I want to do something more creative with the bagel itself or the sandwich, it's still approachable and familiar.”
Photo by Michael Bryant and text by Alexandra Jones for the Inquirer. 2/4/2020
PHILLY’S BAGEL SCENE IS ON A ROLL. HERE ARE 5 COMPANIES TO WATCH.
His bagels are lavishly topped, dense on the inside, crunchy on the outside, with a distinctive swirl that shows where the dough was joined by hand. Every baker offers an everything bagel, but no one, locally anyway, makes a Frenchthing, a heady dose of sesame, fennel, lavender, thyme, and salt.
Right now, Malamy is doing research and development and doing the odd pop-up, which he advertises on Instagram and his website.
He said the name is “a riff on dough as well as a call to conservation with the long lost bird, environment, and culture in mind. Unlike the dodo, the bagel — also with roots in the Old World — has had a more successful trajectory, having achieved ubiquity.”
“Dodo Bagels celebrates heritage and Old World baking traditions and technique with a 21st-century embrace of high-quality local and organic ingredients, sustainable practices, and community engagement.”
Photo by Michael Bryant and text by Michael Klein for the Inquirer. 11/22/2020
WHERE TO EAT BAGELS IN PHILADELPHIA
Alex Malamy’s bagel pop-up in West Philadelphia has gotten people excited because of his unexpected flavor combinations: flavors like The French Thing is a bagel speckled with lavender, fennel, thyme, sesame and salt, and one of his biggest sellers, the Ramen Thing, which stacks up boiled egg, pickled ginger, bamboo shoots, scallions, dried seaweed and spicy mayonnaise. Follow him on Instagram to stay in the loop about upcoming pop-ups.
Photo by Dodo and text by Alexandra Jones and Maddy Sweitzer-Lamme for Philadelphia Magazine. 10/30/2020