Water & Barley

Nice to have a decent bagel place in town. Cute little interior, good selection of bagels/sandwiches. Prices are a bit steep for once you move beyond basic bagel + topping. That said the bagels are good quality and it's nice to have a local bagel place within walking distance.

Perfect breakfast spot downtown. So insanely good, I'd recommend them to any bagel-lover. I was skeptical about a bagel place opening downtown being the real-deal when it came to quality, but I was so pleasantly surprised when I tried it. I got the bacon, egg and cheese on a Garlic Asiago bagel and added scallion cream cheese. The egg is a real, fried egg and was perfectly cooked. The cheese was melty and the bacon had a great flavor. They had run out of their bacon dill cream cheese that I wanted to try, but the scallion was so flavorful with a perfect crunch. Plan ahead as there is minimal seating inside the restaurant, but service is quick so you can grab your sandwich and head down to city dock to enjoy it by the water. I will definitely be coming back to try some of their other sandwiches and cream cheese options!

Just tried the new Water & Barley this morning, and was pretty disappointed in both the product and the pricing. Just a disclaimer before I start - I grew up in NJ with a family of NYC transplants, and lived in Manhattan for a few years before moving to VA. I'm probably a bit jaded when it comes to bagels and bagel shops, and I have a certain expectation for what bagel shops should be. And this isn't it. My wife and I stopped in on our morning walk and each decided to try the bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich. I got mine on a cheddar bagel (no egg bagels? really?) and she got hers on a sesame bagel. The sandwiches cost almost $11 each. Both of our sandwiches tasted overwhelmingly burnt. A campfire burnt taste was so pervasive and present that we couldn't really taste much else. We would have just tossed them out if they didn't set us back $25 after tax and tip. We think it was the bacon that was burnt, which was a problem since the proportion of bacon to egg and cheese was definitely off. Both sandwiches only had one single, fried egg. My sandwich also seemed to have just a single slice of cheese. With such a paltry amount of egg and cheese, it was no wonder that the burnt bacon ruined the whole sandwich. It was also annoying to have so little egg and cheese on a sandwich that cost almost $11. The bagels, themselves, seemed passable. Both were chewy and seemed like they nailed the texture. However, they were rather flavorless. Considering the premium price tag, they didn't TASTE like much of anything. I keep bringing up the price because I think it's important when we're discussing things like bagels, donuts, etc. These are commodities that are made in large quantities, and sold in large quantities at a modest profit. They cost next to nothing to make per unit, and are usually sold at a low cost per unit - usually in a place that's designed to get folks in and out quickly with a sack of product under their arm. Water & Barley seems to run opposite of everything I know about bagel shops. The place is cramped and tight and laid out all wrong, with folks having to wade through waiting customers to get all of the way into the back to place an order. There's no dedicated place to wait for orders to come up, and an oddly trendy living room setup in the front that seems out of place and useless for both waiting AND eating. I would say that they're set up more like a sandwich shop, and are more focused on selling bagel sandwiches than actual bagels, but there's no real tables to eat anything, so it kinda fails at both being a to-go bagel shop and an eat-in sandwich shop. Also, for a place that's decorated as fancy and trendy as it is, they don't do specialty coffee drinks, which seems strange. Then there's the prices. I like to reference the menu of our go-to bagel shop in NJ when I talk bagel pricing. That shop charges $7 for a sandwich (with TWO eggs) and $16 for a bakers dozen. Water & Barley is charging $11 for a sandwich and $30 for a bakers dozen. And the product simply isn't good enough to warrant the massively inflated prices. Overall, Water & Barley's bagels aren't something that I'd go out of my way to get (and spend far too much money on). And the entire concept - from decor, to pricing, to layout - just seems OFF for a bagel shop. Bagels aren't trendy. They're a quick breakfast on the way to work. A dozen or two of them are a quick and inexpensive way to feed a family or an office. Bagels aren't live-edge tables, accent walls, and mid-century modern living room furniture. They're cheap diner tables on a linoleum floor in a space that is open and optimized for folks to get in, order, pay, and get out. I had high hopes for Water & Barley...but after trying them, I'm stuck with a bad (burnt) taste in my mouth.

I was very excited to try out the new bagel shop, unfortunately there was a bit left to desire. The bacon was barely cooked, so I took it off. I would definitely make sure to double check before sending food out of the kitchen. Unfortunately we didn’t notice until we were too far away.