Line-Inducing Pop-Up Brick Street Bagels Is Moving Into a Permanent Home in South Boston | Eater Boston

"A two-year-old bagel pop-up that has consistently drawn weekend crowds at the South End Buttery is opening its first permanent storefront at 371 West Broadway (corner of E Street) in South Boston later this year. In its pop-up form, the bagel shop sells a tight menu of fluffy bagels with crispy exteriors in a handful of flavors, including asiago cheese and rosemary sea salt; walk by the South End Buttery on weekend mornings and you’ll spot customers posted up at every available space inside the cafe and at its outdoor tables, ripping and dipping warm bagels into to-go tubs of cream cheese. Moving into a permanent shop will allow the operation to expand its menu to include open-faced sandwiches and coffee, perhaps revive the cheesy, saucy bagel pockets, and provide enough space to actually schmear cream cheese onto bagels. Owner Jordan Renouf is running a crowdfunding campaign on NuMarket to raise $100,000 to help cover the costs of opening the storefront. “The building we are moving into is one of the oldest in South Boston, which means it has a lot of charm but also a ton of work that needs to be done,” Renouf tells Eater in an email. “Essentially, we are starting from a place of having four brick walls and needing to build the rest.” The fundraising will help cover basics like new plumbing and electrical work. Renouf hopes to open the new location this May if all goes according to plan; the South End Buttery pop-up will continue to operate in addition to the South Boston storefront. The broader Boston bagel scene is long dominated by decades-old players like Kupel’s in Brookline and Rosenfeld’s in Newton, with newer entrants such as Bagelsaurus in Cambridge and Exodus in Roslindale finding followings; lines at Seaport newcomer PopUp Bagels (a rip-and-dip purveyor with a cult following out of New York) suggest diners remain hungry for more." - Erika Adams