Modern Bread & Bagel, the quick-service gluten free bagel shop that always has a line (I have a son who has celiac disease so we shuffle up to 14th Street whenever we can) has taken the space in the Sonder hotel-ish building on the southwest corner of Duane and Church. This is exciting news.

That building was last the Duane Street Hotel, which closed in May 2021; Sonder took it over a few months later. When the hotel closed, so did Jehangir Mehta’s restaurant Graffiti Earth, which he originally opened in 2013 as Mehtaphor.

The Modern Bread menu is entirely gluten-free and nut-free; the bagels are kettle-boiled and made with ancient grains. The salmon is smoked in house. There are plenty of other meal options on the menu, which they describe as pescatarian, vegetable forward. The Upper East Side location has pan pizzas; maybe that will come to this location as well. They also have lots of vegan options (there’s even a BEC and vegan lox, made from marinated carrots). The cinnamon bun is there most popular pastry item.

The company was founded by Orly Gottesman, whose husband was diagnosed with celiac disease when they were dating. They moved to Paris as a young couple and she started learning French pastry while there, experimenting with gluten free versions at home. When they moved to Sydney, she attended Cordon Bleu Culinary School there and worked with the head chef for pastry on an independent study for GF pastry development.

She launched Blends by Orly after school, since by then she had figured out the best flours to mimic wheat flour. She has developed blends for all kinds of baking. (I’m on it! — though I am really devoted to Bob’s Red Mill.)

When they moved back to New York in 2019, they came across an old bagel shop for rent on the Upper West Side — that started the chain. The kettle boiling is key — that’s what makes it not bread with a hole in the middle, as she says in this video below.

They have three locations in the city now, plus three in California. Some have liquor licenses and dinner, so more on that soon.