Zucker’s Bagels, which has been on Chambers since 2006, has moved across the street to a much bigger space, allowing for better and smoother operations and a lot more customer seating. The official opening was last week.

“We outgrew the space across the street and it was frustrating for customers as well as us,” said founder Matt Pomerantz. Now they have three floors that are suited for bagel rolling, hot food production and especially online and third party delivery orders. “After covid, we had more and more of those orders and we needed a better way to handle them. And we knew our in-person customers wanted to sit.”

Zucker’s has six other locations — Tribeca was the first since Matt lived on Desbrosses; he would go on to raise both kids here and now lives south of the World Trade Center. The bagel business started, however, in 1996 with Murray’s Bagels, which Matt and his brother founded as a family business, named for their father. (Zucker is their mother’s maiden name.) Matt’s brother still has Murray’s, just south of 14th.

The new space has a dedicated spot for the bagel rollers — the rollers roll and bake at each store, coming in the middle of the night to do a very specialized task. “The hand rollers are a unique group, and they are hard to find,” Matt said. “They’ve been working for me a long time.” And with the bigger space, the menu has expanded to include hot dogs, smash burgers, and all the specialty egg sandwiches they had at the kiosk on Bogardus Plaza for a year. (He said they could not do enough business there to make it worth it, at least at Zucker’s price point.)

Their sourcing is largely NYC based: hot dogs from Feltman’s in Coney Island; babka from Green’s in South Williamsburg; salmon from Acme in Greenpoint. The whitefish is shipped from Door County in Michigan once a week. They have a whole menu of plant-based spreads and the bagels will be vegan in a couple of weeks — the Grand Central location is testing them now. There’s also a BEC special going on now with John MacDonald of Smyth Tavern.

Matt and his business partner, Dan Pace, met at Deloitte in 1983; Dan joined Zucker’s in 2012. There are other neighborhood collaborations: their friend David Bender, with whom Matt coached Downtown Soccer when their kids were little, created the art for the new space; David Weiner of Priority Bikes on Hudson made a custom ride that hangs on the wall as decor; Ferra Designs did the metal work out of their workshop in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. That part alone is worth a visit.

Zucker’s Bagels & Smoked Fish
143 Chambers | West Broadway & Greenwich
212-608-5844
Daily 7a – 2:30p