At New Bun Appetit, Toasty Bagels Come Topped With Crab, Smoked Salmon, Ikura!

Bun Appetit 
The Corner House, 457 P. Guevarra Street corner Recto Street, San Juan
Facebook: www.facebook.com/bunappetitph
Open from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Monday to Sunday

(SPOT.ph) Who isn't a sucker for success stories that started with humble beginnings? Such is the case with homegrown brand Bun Appetit, best known for their lobster and crab rolls that don't skimp on the seafood. Its rise to fame started with doing home deliveries; soon they moved to bigger places like the Salcedo Weekend Market and a short stint at The Pantree. As the years went on, they found themselves opening their stall at the food hall that is The Grid at Power Plant Mall, but their story doesn't end there. 

When the opportunity came along, owners Lawrence Cua and Iya Jimenez cast their nets wide, aiming for a bigger catch, and opened their first standalone post at The Corner House. And at this corner street where P. Guevarra and Recto meet, you can find Bun Appetit's branch-exclusive sesame-coated bagels schmeared with cream cheese and your choice of ocean catch.

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Here's what to expect at the new Bun Appetit at The Corner House: 

If you feel like you're having a fever dream because you remember trying Bun Appetit bagels at Salcedo Weekend Market sometime around last year, there's no need to pinch yourself. You're not dreaming. You were one of the lucky first people to try Bun Appetit's bagels right before they pulled out from the weekend market. Roughly a year later, Bun Appetit brings these toasty bagels back on the menu, but this time it's offered at The Corner House—within its glass walls and brick red floor, where you can sit on the wooden chairs enjoying their branch-exclusive bagels.

Much like the Bun Appetit menu, the bagel selection is simple. There are five bagels on the menu to choose from, and these are the Anchovy (P450), Ikura (P650), Shrimp Avocado (P390), Crab (P450), and our personal favorite, the Smoked Salmon (P390). The bagel alone is worth mentioning—Cua tells us these are from Pan de Mya, a Pangasinan-based bakery that customized their bakes to fit their requirements.

All these bagels are open-faced (i.e., what's served is only half of one whole bagel), and are coated in sesame seeds. With the open kitchen layout of their store, you'll see these breads first being pan-fried to give more of a golden color to the buns and give a slight char to the seeds. Unlike the usual method of toasting bagels in an oven, Cua says that choosing to pan-fry "does not dry out" the bagels. "They’re kept soft [on the inside], with just the right amount of [toastiness on the] surface."

And do we agree? Oh, do these bagels have our heart. It's  denser than the usual and the pan-frying process brings out the taste of the sesame. We even wish we could get a simpler, buttered version of it and dip in their (criminally underrated) clam chowder, but we digress. 

But the generous slather of French cream cheese and the seafood (salmon, roe, shrimp, and anchovy) that tops these dense bagels are really where it's at. Lawrence says they were able to work with both imported and local catch. "We use the same blue swimming crab meat from Bacolod that we use for other sandwiches. Our Shrimp Avocado bagel uses shrimp from Cebu. Our anchovies are from Dumaguete," Lawrence shares. As for the Atlantic salmon and salmon roe, these are both from Japan.

The Smoked Salmon Bagel is topped with a tangy but sweet layer of cream cheese that compliments the slices of salmon covering the entire surface of the bagel. The fish has a clean taste—no sliminess whatsoever—and is smoked just enough that it's the more palpable note you'll get in each bite. This bagel has slices of red onion and capers which add a sharp zing to each bite. If that's not enough, there are also cornichons on the side.

The other bagels feature other toppings to go with the bagel-cream cheese combo, going by their namesakes. The Ikura with salmon roe has a strong ocean, briny taste in each egg; the Anchovy has thin strips of the fish, which surprisingly aren't salty at all; the Shrimp Avocado delivers an earthy, buttery combination; and the Crab has a light sweetness to contrast with the cream cheese. As Gen Z would say, they're "giving," and for millennials, these bagels definitely "slayed."

The opening of the new branch marks a significant new chapter for the brand. "Expansion was not really in our minds," Lawrence tells us. Our vision for Bun Appetit was never to be a chain but we were always hoping to have at least a second store when the right location comes up. And came up it did!" Safe to say this new chapter is off to a great start—a new space offering toasted, hefty seafood bagels is enough reason to keep going back, but we're likewise excited to be a witness to what unravels in the next pages of their story.

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