The Best Bagels in Melbourne for a Hole Lot of Yum

Melbourne was eating bagels long before they came with truffle cream cheese and a queue around the block. The city’s Jewish bakeries have been boiling and baking them for generations; on Carlisle Street, Glick’s helped make the Eastern European-style boiled bagel part of Melbourne life back in the 1960s.

Now the bagel is having a particularly Melbourne second act. Montreal-style rounds emerge smoky and lightly sweet from wood-fired ovens; New York-style versions come stacked with pastrami, salmon and folded egg; elsewhere, schmears, pickles and fillings wander happily through the flavours of the city’s migrant kitchens. The result is less a trend than a very good argument for breakfast becoming lunch.

From old-school boiled classics to the new cafes taking the ring somewhere new, these are the best bagels in Melbourne worth crossing town for.

Best Bagels in Melbourne CBD

The Midday Workspace

Bagels are only half the story at The Midday Workspace, the Carlton cafe-meets-workspace from the team behind Humble Rays, Tori’s and Regale. Made in-house, they’re stacked with combinations like Korean BBQ pulled pork, nori cream cheese and sesame, or roast beef, brie and onion chutney. On the sweeter side, there are charcoal bagels loaded with matcha cream cheese. Factor in serious matcha, hojicha and a handsome former brewery setting, and you’ve got yourself a dream weekday spot.

553 Swanston Street, Carlton

Schmucks Bagels

Long before Melbourne’s latest bagel boom, Schmucks was already feeding the CBD. Inspired by founder Jeremy Marmur’s Jewish heritage, its bagels are steamed rather than boiled, giving them a lighter chew without surrendering the all-important structure. Go classic with smoked salmon, cream cheese and pickled onion, or commit to the Salt’n’Sauer, packed with thick-cut salted beef, piccalilli, Dijon and sauerkraut.

Tenancy 9/567 Collins Street, Melbourne

Guests Lane, Melbourne

It’s Bagel

At It’s Bagel, even the bread has opinions. Olive, basil-spinach and black-pepper cheese sit beside the classics, before the sandwich menu takes over. The FIG is the one that makes you look twice: mortadella and smoked ham against red-wine fig compote, cream cheese and crushed pistachio. Then there’s harissa-maple pumpkin with cranberry and pumpkin cream cheese, or pastrami with Swiss, sauerkraut and Thousand Island. It now has two CBD addresses, after adding Exhibition Street in late 2025.

2/50 Queen Street, Melbourne

7B/121 Exhibition Street, Melbourne

Bagel Hut

Bagel Hut is one of those CBD discoveries that makes a weekday lunch feel suddenly sorted. The Little Lonsdale shop fills its bagels generously: smoked salmon with lemon cream cheese, capers, cucumber and dill; chicken with pesto, cheese and tomato; salami with mozzarella and rocket. There’s coffee, very little ceremony and, now, a second city outpost on Queen Street. One to keep in your pocket for the next between-meetings hunger emergency.

162 Little Lonsdale Street, Melbourne

361 Queen Street, Melbourne

Bobby’s Coffee & Bagels

Down Punch Lane, just off Lonsdale Street, Bobby’s Coffee & Bagels is where CBD mornings get considerably better. The Goldie Lox stacks smoked salmon with herbed cream cheese, cucumber, capers and onion; the New Yorker goes pastrami, Gruyère, pickles and Dijon aioli. Chicken Caesar, BLAT and bacon-and-egg handle the later starts. Weekdays only, naturally — Bobby’s has the energy of slipping out for coffee and returning to your desk with a bagel, a little late and entirely unbothered.

Rear 53–57 Lonsdale Street, Punch Lane, Melbourne

Bricklane

Bricklane has never insisted that a bagel be eaten on the run. Here, it arrives sliced, toasted and open-faced, leaving you to work through smoked salmon and cream cheese, pastrami with mustard and melted Swiss, or avocado, tomato, feta and basil at something approaching a civilised pace. The menu still has room for the wonderfully Australian inevitability of Vegemite and melted cheese, too. A bagel, a coffee, a chair: sometimes breakfast really can remain that uncomplicated.

South Melbourne & Prahran

Best Bagels in Melbourne’s Western Suburbs

Whiplash Cafe

Hawthorn’s old corner milk bar has had quite the second act. Whiplash now deals in excellent coffee, deli sandwiches and a bagel line-up built for savoury cravings: smoked salmon with cream cheese and lilliput capers, five-pepper pastrami with house pickles, or egg and bacon with confit garlic aioli and cheddar béchamel. The retro red-and-white fit-out gives it plenty of character, but the real reason to detour to Auburn Road is lunch.

226 Auburn Road, Hawthorn

Bagel Community

Bagel Community has made a fine little habit of excess. Their Reuben comes fat with pastrami, sauerkraut, Swiss, pickles and kewpie; breakfast means fried egg, beef rashers, American cheese, tomato relish and burger sauce, all pressed into a warm bagel that barely contains the situation. Then, unexpectedly, matcha enters the room — blueberry worked into a bagel, banana and mango stirred into drinks. The whole menu is halal, and none of it feels remotely predictable.

284 Union Road, Moonee Ponds

170A Moreland Road, Brunswick

29 Xavier Street, Oak Park

Migrant Coffee

Migrant Coffee has entered a new chapter without losing the story that made it matter. Founded in 2019 by Melodee Malazarte and Stacey Earsman as a love letter to their Filipino and Thai-Māori families, the West Footscray cafe passed to Brenda and Andrew Ly in 2025, themselves raised in Melbourne’s west by Chinese-Vietnamese families. The bagels still speak beautifully to that inheritance: order the Pastrami Mami, layering brisket pastrami, Swiss cheese, cream cheese and seeded mustard with Filipino atsara. Coffee Supreme is poured alongside; the backyard remains made for staying awhile.

3/576 Barkly Street, West Footscray

Ritzy – Bread, Coffee, Bagels

At Ritzy, go savoury: the chicken-and-pesto bagel comes hot, cheesy and generously filled, with enough heft to make lunch feel unnecessary. Schnitzel and egg-heavy breakfast numbers follow the same abundant logic, while Inglewood coffee keeps things moving and cinnamon scrolls wait nearby for anyone who thought they were only stopping in for one thing. It’s a cheerful little Hawthorn Road operation, and one worth remembering.

605 Hawthorn Road, East Brighton

Best Bagels in Melbourne’s Eastern Suburbs

Baker Bleu

Before Melbourne developed its present bagel fever, Baker Bleu was already treating the ring with the seriousness usually reserved for a great loaf. Mike and Mia Russell bring the bakery’s long-fermentation philosophy to bagels with beautifully burnished crusts and that essential, stubborn chew. Have one with ocean trout, herb cream cheese, capers and red onion, or wagyu salt beef with horseradish cream and pickles. At Hawksburn, you can even peer into the bakery through a bagel-shaped window — a rare architectural joke worth indulging.

Caulfield North, Hawksburn & Cremorne

Circle Bagel & Cafe

There is nothing terribly performative about Circle Bagel & Cafe — which, in the current bagel economy, feels rather refreshing. The little Hawthorn East shop keeps things pleasingly substantial: warm bagels with house-cured salmon, tomato, cream cheese and capers; scrambled eggs sharpened with chipotle; beef pastrami; prosciutto; or simply cream cheese and jam. Coffee is taken seriously, fillings are applied with a generous hand and breakfast has a habit of becoming lunch. Exactly as a neighbourhood bagel shop should behave.

729 Burwood Road, Hawthorn East

Hank’s Bagelry

Hank’s Bagelry is Armadale’s rather handsome answer to the New York bagel shop, all stained glass, blue steel and mornings unfolding along Beatty Avenue. The current menu has plenty worth getting distracted by: salmon cured pastrami-style with caper, dill and jalapeño cream cheese; slow-cooked brisket under American cheddar; or za’atar-and-Parmesan chicken schnitzel with slaw and pickles. Even breakfast has teeth, with folded eggs, bacon, cheddar and harissa mayo. There’s now a second outpost at Chadstone, but the original Armadale room remains the one with the neighbourhood mood.

13 Beatty Avenue, Armadale

Market Pavilion, Chadstone

Mile End Bagels

Long before Melbourne’s current bagel crush, Mile End Bagels was tending a wood fire. Since 2016, its Montreal-style rounds have followed the old formula: slightly sweeter dough, a dip in honeyed water, then into the flames until blistered, bronzed and crisp at the edges. Have one simply schmeared with dill-and-caper cream cheese, or go all in on smoked salmon or brisket pastrami with hot-and-sweet mustard and pickles. Ten years on, the smoke still makes the difference.

Fitzroy, Brunswick, Richmond & Hawthorn

Bissel B

Bissel B has a little fun with the New York fantasy without taking it too seriously. Bagels come soft, glossy and generously filled, with the menu borrowing names from across Manhattan: the Wall Street is a gloriously excessive stack of fried egg, bacon, sausage and a round hash brown, while the Upper East Side goes greener with roast pumpkin, feta, spinach and yoghurt tahini. Doughnuts and cookies wait nearby.

111 Bridge Road, Richmond

312-314 Glen Huntly Road, Elsternwick

Lawson’s Bagels

At Lawson’s Bagels, the bagels are baked in-house and filled with magnificent abandon: beef pastrami, sauerkraut, melted mozzarella and chipotle mayo; cured salmon with dill cream cheese and capers; or scrambled eggs, bacon and cheese for breakfast in its most committed form. Whatever you order, expect lunch to become unnecessary. This is South Yarra’s two-hands-required bagel.

51 Toorak Road, South Yarra

Best Bagels in Melbourne’s Northern Suburbs

Masses Bagels

Masses Bagels began, rather wonderfully, with a bagel in Hokkaido and a sourdough starter carried home from New Zealand. After queues at Carlton Farmers Market, Jack Muir-Rigby and Carmen Newton now make their wild-fermented bagels from a tiny Smith Street shop, each one taking three days from starter to boil to bake. Order one still warm with confit-onion-and-chive quark for tearing and dipping, or the ginger-and-cardamom sugar version that lands somewhere deliciously between bagel and doughnut. Seasonal fillings follow what’s good rather than what’s expected.

5 Smith Street, Fitzroy

Take Two Bagels

Take Two Bagels has been feeding Melbourne’s bagel habit since 2017, and the numbered menu makes ordering dangerously easy. The #3 piles mortadella, melted cheese, dill pickles, herb cream cheese and mustard into one satisfyingly unruly handful; the #6 goes harder with chilli eggs, chipotle and fried shallots. There’s brisket, smoked salmon and simple schmears too, all built on bagels made fresh daily. Come hungry. This is not really a one-napkin breakfast.

105 Lygon Street, Brunswick East

170 Union Road, Ascot Vale

Bagels Baby

The old butcher’s shop on Derby Street has had a rather delicious second life. Bagels Baby fills its bright corner room with bagels substantial enough to derail lunch plans: chicken katsu with all the crunch, brisket under Swiss, smoked salmon lox and a ricotta-and-strawberry combination that sounds improbable until you eat it. The classics are here too, but Bagels Baby is at its best when things get a little less orthodox. Crisps and pickles alongside, naturally.

36 Derby Street, Pascoe Vale 

Bagels & Co

We recently found one of our favourite breakfast bagels hiding in plain sight on Sydney Road. Bagels & Co gives the classic bagel-shop formula a Mediterranean nudge, but our order is wonderfully straightforward: poppyseed, gooey egg, avocado, tomato and chilli, preferably with crisps and pickles alongside. Come lunchtime, crumbed chicken gets involved, while the smoked salmon version is one of the better ones we’ve eaten around Melbourne. The bagels themselves have that all-important chew — soft enough to bite, sturdy enough to survive what’s inside.

627 Sydney Road, Brunswick

Best Bagels in Melbourne’s Bayside & South-East Suburbs

Belafonte Coffee

Belafonte keeps the brief beautifully narrow: roast excellent coffee, make excellent bagels, open the doors three mornings a week. Founders Shane McGrath and Ayana Hibi started the bagel side of the operation during lockdown, when McGrath began chasing the New York-style chew he was missing. The result is a proper malted, hand-rolled and boiled bagel, made in flavours from everything and poppyseed to cinnamon raisin and blueberry. Get one warm with spring onion and garlic cream cheese, chilli oil or whatever special is running that weekend; matcha, anko and fruit have all entered the chat. Small batches and limited hours mean regulars know not to leave it too late.

Shop 5/556–558 North Road, Ormond

Bakehouse by Vic

Brighton’s answer to a New York bakery mood, Bakehouse by Vic has built a loyal following on chewy bodega-style bagels, chunky cookies and the banana pudding that sent Melbourne dessert people into a minor spiral. The smoked salmon and chicken Caesar bagels cover the savoury side, while Nutella-loaded cookies, matcha drinks and generous tubs of pudding handle the rest. In a word: fun.

2 Railway Walk, Brighton

Tuckshop

What began as a lockdown pop-up now has a permanent green-tiled window in Moorabbin and a Saturday crowd that knows exactly what it wants. Tuckshop takes the bagel somewhere more interesting: hanger steak under molten Swiss, pastrami-cured salmon with plenty of briny bite, satay tofu with crunch and heat. Strong coffee and substantial salads round things out, while pickles, crisps and golden hash browns make an already ambitious lunch rather difficult to eat gracefully. All the better for it.

3 Tuck Street, Moorabbin

Huff Bagelry

Huff Bagelry has been around long enough to remember when a bagel was simply breakfast, not a lifestyle category. The formula remains pleasingly straightforward: glossy, chewy rounds boiled and baked fresh, then split and piled with smoked salmon and capers, chicken schnitzel, tuna melt or egg and bacon. There are five shops now, but the pleasure is unchanged — strong coffee, a warm paper bag and a bagel substantial enough to require both hands.

Carnegie, Bentleigh, Mentone, South Melbourne & Fitzroy

Still hungry? Keep breakfast going with our guide to the best brunch spots in Melbourne’s CBD, track down the city’s best coffee roasters or see what’s just opened in our edit of the best new cafes in Melbourne. Because once you’ve started the morning with a very good bagel, settling for an ordinary breakfast tomorrow feels unnecessarily bleak.