The Best Bagels in Toronto
Toronto has never needed Montreal’s permission to love a bagel. The city’s oldest bagel bakery has been making the same soft, light rounds since the 1960s, closer to a dinner roll than a jawbreaker and dangerously easy to finish in the car on the way home. That style grew up along Bathurst Street, where Jewish bakeries followed their customers north from Kensington Market in the middle of the last century. Some of those shops still turn out twisters, flat bagels and bags of a dozen for Sunday brunch.
Montreal-style bagels came later, honey-boiled and wood-fired, smaller, denser and sweeter. They’ve long since found a home here too, from a counter at the back of the St. Lawrence Market to shops that keep their ovens going around the clock. These days, finding Montreal-style bagels in Toronto takes no special effort, though finding a great one still does. Purists can keep arguing over which city does it better; we’re happy to eat both.
More recently, a new generation of bagel shops in Toronto has pushed things further. Hand-rolled, malt-boiled bagels in the New York tradition have built a devoted following in Oakwood Village. Meanwhile, slow-fermented sourdough bagels, made with natural leavening instead of commercial yeast, are drawing lineups on St. Clair West and Ossington. More than one of these newcomers regularly sells out before lunch.
That range is what makes Toronto bagels so much fun. Some mornings call for a warm sesame bagel eaten straight from the paper bag, with nothing on it but maybe a little butter. Others call for smoked sturgeon, horseradish cream cheese or a generous stack of pastrami, and the city’s best bagel sandwiches can easily stand in for lunch. Our list covers both: some bagel shops where the bagel itself is the point, others where what goes on it matters just as much. Here are the best bagels in Toronto right now.
Primrose Bagels
Sam Davis and Jesse Rapoport built a cult following with backyard bagel parties and restaurant pop-ups before opening this Oakwood Village corner shop in January 2020. Their bagels take their cues from New York spots like Ess-a-Bagel: hand-rolled, malt-boiled and a little irregular, with a crackly crust, a chewy crumb and a nutty sweetness from the malt. But the breakfast sandwiches are what keep us coming back. The Bodega Bagel is worth setting an alarm for: egg, American cheese, pickles, shredded lettuce, garlic mayo and a shot of Cholula. It’s a deli-counter classic done right, with the pickles and hot sauce cutting through all that soft egg and melted cheese. If you’re hungrier, the egg and pastrami with Swiss is the heavier move.
Toronto
Gryfe's
If Toronto has a house bagel, this is it. The Gryfe family moved its bakery from Hamilton to Kensington Market in 1925, then north up Bathurst, but the bagel only arrived in the 1960s, when Art and Ruth Gryfe were asked for a dozen and figured it out. That recipe hasn’t budged. A Gryfe’s bagel tops out around 3.5 ounces, roughly half the weight of a typical New York bagel, with a thin, crisp crust and an interior soft enough to tear apart with your fingers. It’s lighter than a Montreal bagel and less sweet, and plenty of customers admit to eating three before they get home. David Fisher and David Granovsky, who bought the bakery from the family in 2022, keep three ovens running all day, so a fresh batch is never far off. Grab a mixed dozen, and add a blueberry bun while you’re at it.
Toronto
Bagel World
Bagel World opened at Bathurst and Wilson in 1963, and the original shop still runs like a neighbourhood diner with a bakery attached. Charles Sherkin founded it; his son Michael now co-owns it with Ephraim Dloomy, and the staff know their regulars’ orders by heart. The bagels are boiled, then baked until the crust blisters to a deep gold, giving you a real crunch before a dense, yielding middle. Start with a classic round sesame, then branch out to the house specialties: the Twister, coated three times in poppy seeds and the shop’s bestseller, and the Flagel, a thinner, flatter, crispier bagel that makes a terrific base for a tuna melt with cheddar, tomato and red onion. Stay for shakshuka or a smoked-fish platter in the dining room, and give yourself extra time to park. The lot is famously tight.
Toronto
The Bagel House
Sat Chouhan and Jessie Sahdra learned their craft at Montreal bakeries, St-Viateur among them, before bringing that tradition to Toronto around the turn of the millennium. The method is pure Montreal: hand-rolled dough with no shortening, a dip in honey water, then a wood-fired oven fuelled by maple. The result is smaller, denser and sweeter than the classic Toronto bagel. Toronto Life once argued it might even improve on the Montreal original, with a slightly lighter crumb and a bit more chew. Choose from regular, special and twister bagels, then add lox and cream cheese or one of the deli sandwiches. Here’s the real advantage, though: the shops are open 24/7, which makes Bagel House one of the only places in the city where a still-warm Montreal-style bagel is on the table at 3 a.m.
Toronto
St Urbain Bagel Bakery
The name points straight to Montreal, and so does the bagel. St. Urbain has been baking at the back of the St. Lawrence Market since at least the early 1990s, and the market credits it as the first business to bring Montreal-style bagels to Toronto. These bagels are dense, lean and gently sweet, in the St-Viateur and Fairmount tradition, and they come out of a wood-fired oven throughout the day. That’s the whole point here: buy one still warm and eat it while you wander the market. Sesame is the benchmark, but the family-run counter also makes cinnamon-raisin, onion-garlic, blueberry and multigrain, with a long lineup of cream cheeses alongside hummus and baba ganoush. If you’re curious, try the Craigle, a croissant-bagel hybrid that had its moment on TikTok. Then take a dozen home, because favourite flavours sell out fast.
Toronto
Arthur's Snackette
Raegan Steinberg and Alex Cohen have spent a decade running Arthur’s Nosh Bar in Montreal, the Saint-Henri brunch spot known for its Jewish comfort food. When they couldn’t find the right Toronto space for a full Nosh Bar, they went smaller: a takeout counter tucked in a laneway off St. Clair West, opened in April with sourdough baker Dara Gallinger (formerly of Brodflour) and partner Ari Zuckerbrot. Don’t expect a Montreal bagel. This is a new recipe developed for Toronto, made with Quebec flour and natural leavening, no commercial yeast, and fermented for more than a day before it’s boiled and baked. There are just two kinds, sesame and the house everything (onion, garlic, salt, caraway, poppy, sesame), served open-faced with cultured butter, Smoke Bloke smoked salmon, cheese from Tony’s, Arthur’s egg salad, or almond butter and jam. Another great spot for schmear lovers!
Toronto
Schmaltz Appetizing
Chef Anthony Rose opened this appetizing counter in 2014 in a small building behind Fat Pasha, his Middle Eastern restaurant on Dupont, and it has never been shy with portions. Sandwiches come wrapped in paper and cut straight through the middle, so you can see every layer. The Maven (lemon-dill gravlax, plain cream cheese, capers, onions) is the classic. The Alter Kocher brings smoked Acadian sturgeon with scallion cream cheese, and the Chazzer pairs pastrami-style gravlax with salmon roe and horseradish cream cheese. Our favourite, though, is the pastrami bagel. The Shemendrick keeps it simple: a generous stack of smoked pastrami, yellow mustard and a full sour pickle on the bagel of your choice. The mustard and pickle bring the acid, the pastrami brings the salt and smoke, and the bagel just about holds it all together.
Toronto
Company Bagel
The newest name on this list, and already one of the hardest to get. Company Bagel opened on Ossington in October 2026, in the old La Cubana space. It’s the project of self-described bagel obsessive Mark Martone, who has eaten a bagel every morning for a decade, with chef Eli Kerbel (Bar Raval, La Carnita) helping to perfect the recipe. The bagel is naturally leavened sourdough, made in-house: airy and stretchy inside, with a blistered, crackly crust. Company Bagel is the kind of spot you go to when you crave a good bagel loaded with delicious toppings Smoked whitefish or salmon over cream cheese covers the classics. A deli-style pan con tomate makes sense coming from a Bar Raval alum. And the sweet option, cardamom cream cheese with fresh clementine segments, is the most unexpected thing on the counter. Bulk bagels come in plain, poppy, sesame and everything. They sell out regularly, so go early.
Toronto
