Kleinsky’s bagels review: Are these London’s most exclusive bagels?

The youthful looking 45-year-old (who could be 20 years younger) clad in jeans and a leather jacket, tells me bagels are a by-product of his original menu. “I’d started curing and smoking meat and making pastrami. I wanted to be as close to Katz’s as possible. People liked it, and I thought that if I could also make bagels, I’d have a business.”

His inspiration had been iconic Brooklyn-based Jewish deli Mile End — also not kosher — which he credits as being the trigger for the current renaissance of Jewish deli style food we’ve been seeing in London and New York.

“The owners were a young hipster couple — I saw them on television in 2013. Before they opened Mile End a Jewish deli hadn’t opened in New York for almost 40 years. They basically saw they [the delis] were dying out and wanted to revitalise it for a new generation. I thought ‘wow that’s what I want to do’.”

He spent the following year working out how to bake bagels from scratch, learning the theory of baking, understanding the science of it and testing various recipes. “It was very challenging in the beginning and there was a lot of failure. When we started the bagels weren’t that consistent.”

Kleinsky's Rugelach and pastry counter[Missing Credit]

Towards the end of that year. he visited New York and Montreal — also famous for their bagels. “We hit every famous bagel shop and pastrami [salt beef] shop so I had a point of reference to know where we were in comparison. I felt pretty good about our pastrami when I went overseas — that we were doing it true to what it should be. No one in Cape Town was doing it anywhere near as authentically as we were, and the same thing went for the bagels.”

He explains that to make authentic New York bagels you need to slow ferment them in the fridge for 24 to 48 hours. “That takes a lot of space, so most people just roll, boil and bake theirs. You don’t get the same flavour and density of the crust.”

He didn’t just go the extra mile to get the food right, Klein and his brother spent four months renovating the store in Sea Point themselves. As a suburb with one of the country’s largest Jewish populations it was the obvious location: “There’d been a deli there when we were growing up where everyone had gone for their bagels. It had closed and I sensed a bit of a void.”

His instinct proved right and very quickly their tiny unit which he says was little more than a “hole in the wall” started to see queues outside at weekends. The kitchen was so small they struggled to keep up with demand for their bagels, latkes and chicken soup. A second bakery helped, but in December 2019, they expanded again — to a huge unit across the road.

A few months later the pandemic shut the world down, but the pivot the pair were forced to make ended up creating yet another arm to their burgeoning business.

“They say that when life gives you lemons…” he smiles. “We weren’t allowed to open the restaurant and when we were allowed to re-open we could only sell ready-made food.”

Their range included cream cheese, smoked salmon and bags of frozen-sliced bagels.  “Someone saw them on the internet, and we started getting enquiries from Johannesburg and Durban asking if we could send them there.”

Soon they were supplying frozen bagels to supermarkets and delis, growing so big they had to extend the bakery several times until today the current site comprises a 120-seater restaurant, full retail shop and a bakery which, as well as their bagels, offers rye bread, bagels and challah, burger buns, pretzel rolls, cheesecake and carrot cake.

For now, though, he is concentrating on developing the menu in England and hoping to introduce the Ashkenazi menu staples to a wider (non-Jewish) audience — something he feels has happened in New York and that they have managed to do in their home country.

“When you go to New York and you see Jewish delis there, they’re not just for Jewish people, they’re part of New York culture as much as they’re part of Jewish culture in a sense. New Yorkers will tell they know bagels and that’s how we want Kleinsky’s to be seen.”

He proudly tells me the Cape Town Kleinsky’s attracted non-Jewish diners who’d come to experience haimish cuisine. “When we first opened, I don’t think many people outside the Jewish community knew what a latke was. Within like a year, if you were Capetonian you knew what a latke was, and you knew about our latke Benedict. And it’s incredible the amount of people who’ve come to our restaurant and said ‘I’ve always wanted to try a matzah ball’ because they’ve never had the opportunity and they’re like ‘wow they’re so good’. I always find that really a testament to what it is that we set out to do — that there are these other people who are trying this, and it wasn’t part of their growing up.”

Before I leave Klein prepares me a toasted everything bagel with dill schmear and capers. It’s delicious. He tells me they always toast their bagels unless oven fresh — “Because they are lower in sugar than English bagels, they’re better toasted if not served directly from the oven.”  

And Klein says he’s been pleasantly surprised by the welcome Kleinsky’s has received in London, especially from those familiar with the South African store. “We’ve had people asking when are you going to serve your blintzes? When will have your latkes? Are you going to have your French toast?”
Although the menu  does include a range of bagels and schmears as well as list of set of filled bagels, pretzels, salads, Nutella rugelach, chocolate babka and a range of pastries plus hot and cold drinks the plan is to extend their offer to include more of their trademark dishes. A smoked salmon bagel will cost you £9.70.

He says he’s hoping the Mayfair branch is the start of bigger things — “The vision here is really to bring the entire brand”.

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