Andy’s Pizza owner Andy Brown has devoted his professional career to perfecting the New York-style slice in DC. Now, he’s taking on bagels. The pizza shop’s Bethesda location (4600 East-West Hwy.) began selling bagels this week, and you can expect to find them at other stores in the coming months.
“I came to bagels through bread. And so I always had this sort of thing that I want to continue to add some version of baking,” Brown says. “Then I saw a lot of the guys in New York doing bagels, so I was like, ‘You know what? I’m going to give this a shot.’ And I was like, oh, this is addicting.”
Brown describes his bagels as New York-style, but with a 72 hour dough ferment that creates micro-blistering on the exterior. They’re baked not in pizza ovens, but in ovens that are otherwise used to reheat slices.
“You want this shiny, slightly crispy, but very chewy exterior crust. You want to be able to peel the exterior crust away from the interior bagel bread,” says Brown of what he thinks makes a great bagel. “The one thing that we felt was missing from almost every bagel we tried—outside some of the new guys—is real extended fermentation. Everything kind of sat in our stomachs.”
The bagels come in just three flavors for now: plain, everything, and sesame ($2.50 each or $22.50 for a dozen). Brown notes that many bagel shops don’t make fresh, hot bagels throughout service. “We’re keeping the bagels as fresh as we do the pizza,” he says, noting how they’ll bake off a fresh pie if, say, there are two slices of pepperoni left. “We’re doing the same for the bagels. It’s hot all the way through. There’s steam coming out when you crack into the bagel.”
Bagel sandwiches are limited to egg and cheese with the option for bacon and sausage. While researching other bagel shops, Brown says he often wasn’t sure when the cream cheeses were made or how long ago those scallions were mixed in. So at Andy’s Bagels, flavored cream cheese come with fresh garnishes—like smoked salmon or scallion—rather than ingredients mixed in.
And, yes, there will be pizza bagels—just cheese or pepperoni. A little after 10:30 every day, they’ll become available until sold out. Otherwise, bagels will be available from 7 AM to 11 AM every day.
Brown expects bagels to launch at other locations in the first quarter of 2026, ideally with the same consistency he aims to bring to pizza.
“We have entire company-wide communication every lunch and every dinner service to make sure that all the dough is the exact right temperature, that all the ovens are the right temperature, that everything is proofed correctly,” Brown says. “Hopefully our guests over time have noticed and appreciate the time and effort that we put towards the bread under our pizza. And I think that we carry that reputation into our bagels.”
Jessica Sidman covers the people and trends behind DC’s food and drink scene. Before joining Washingtonian in July 2016, she was Food Editor and Young & Hungry columnist at Washington City Paper. She is a Colorado native and University of Pennsylvania grad.
