When Alice Newton was asked to bake some bagels for her family’s brunch this Easter, she had no idea she was auditioning for a job that would change her life.

When the bagels turned out to be fantastic, her aunt—Alice Boyd—dropped the news: Boyd, a former co-owner of Yoga Pearl, was looking to back a new business venture…and Newton was it.

Two months later, Alice’s Bagels was born. Newton purchased a familiar cart parked in the Good Food Here pod on Southeast Belmont that was most recently home to Rick Gencarelli’s Lardo. After a thorough scrub-down (frying in lard tends to leave a sheen on every surface within ten feet) and weeks of R&D, Newton is ready to debut her handmade creations.

A newbie to the food industry, Newton moved to Portland from New York in 2007, gaining culinary experience during her time at Reed College (coordinating the school’s year-end feast for over one thousand hungry revelers).

The result of constantly tweaking her recipe over three years, Newton’s small, cold-fermented, hand-formed, boiled, and freshly baked bagels are made in a commercial kitchen in Southwest Portland using locally-milled Shepherd’s grain flour.

In addition to Alice’s handmade salt, poppy, onion, or plain bagels, the cart will offer house-cured lox, handmade blackberry jam, plain and flavored schmears (maple bacon schmear, anyone?), fried egg sandwiches, and a seasonally-rotating lunch sandwich, salad, and soup made with fresh produce sourced from local farms.

The cart debuts at 8 am on Friday, August 17th, and regular hours will begin on Wednesday the 22nd. The bagelry will be open Wednesday through Sunday from 8 am to 3 pm. Stop by and say hi, because you just never know when a bagel will change your life.

Alice’s Bagels
4262 SE Belmont Street at the Good Food Here pod