Local bagel purveyor Schlok's, which has won a cadre of fans who line up most mornings for their bagels at their Fell Street window, just announced a second location in downtown SF.
Following in the footsteps of competitor Boichik Bagels, which opened a downtown outpost last summer, Schlok's Bagels and Lox is planning a new location in the heart of SF's very slow-to-recover Financial District, as the Chronicle was first to report.
Shlok's is headed to a space at 315 California Street — a former San Francisco Soup Company location, if you're familiar with the block. Co-owner Zack Schwab tells the Chronicle that he and co-owner James Lok are aiming for a summer opening.
"This has been a long, thoughtful process over the past year, as we’ve all seen what quick expansion can do to quality," Schwab writes on Instagram, making a small dig at competitors. "We had to be sure our team and product were in a good place, and it had to be the right location."
Both Schlok's and Boichik have been lauded among a new generation of bagel makers around the Bay and down in LA (where Boichik just also expanded) — and I confess to being a bit more of a fan of Schlok's, in both texture and flavor.
Schwab, who co-owns The Snug on Upper Fillmore, and Lok (the name is a combination of their names, in addition to being akin to a Yiddish word for something low quality) launched Schlok's as a pandemic pop-up. They opened their brick-and-mortar shop at 1263 Fell Street — really just two windows on the street near Divisadero, one for ordering, one for pickup — in late winter 2022, and it been steadily popular ever since.
In addition to making well yeasted bagels daily, Schlok's makes its own applewood smoked lox and excellent dill-cured gravlax, and offers unique schmear options like herb-citrus, habanero, and caper — having the capers already in the cream cheese is a rather nice touch.
They also offer a sandwich featuring burnt ends from the salmon-smoking process, made with scallion cream cheese and blackened everything spice.
Check their Instagram for updates on the California Street opening.