Call Your Mother: There Are Finally Great Bagels in Denver

Bagel lovers, brace yourselves: Call Your Mother Deli has arrived in Denver. On May 19, it will officially open its first location outside the D.C. area, at Tennyson Street and West 39th Avenue, with additional outposts coming to 1291 Pearl Street in Capitol Hill and another location in RiNo this year.

And spoiler: The bagels are really good. Actually, make that great.

Yes, we have Rosenberg's, which arrived in 2014 and has dominated the city's bagel scene ever since. Its owner, restaurateur Joshua Pollack, has gone on to make even more carb contributions to the Mile High — in the form of Lou's, which is one of our picks for the ten best sandwich shops in the city, and Famous Original J's, which serves one of my favorite slices.

But for all of Pollack's East Coast passion and dedication to re-creating traditional New York-style bagels in Colorado — including using a custom-fabricated machine to engineer NYC water, which many believe is the key to that city's bagel superiority — his offers never quite rose to the level of greatness I crave.

I've eaten a lot of bagels in my life. My entire family is from New York, where I was born. I've chased great bagels up and down the East Coast, and when I moved to Denver in 2004, I quickly accepted the fact that bagels just weren't going to be the same here.

Rosenberg's changed that, for sure, and it's totally deserving of its many fans. But the bagels at Call Your Mother are even better: straight-up crisp-outside, supremely chewy-inside bagel perfection.

And that's just the start of what makes this new addition stand out.
The origin story for this not-so-traditional deli is, in part, a love story. Tired of his desk job, Andrew Dana decided to start Timber Pizza Co. in 2014, cooking pies in a wood-fired oven at farmers' markets in the D.C. area, where he grew up.

Daniela Moreira is from Argentina, where she studied cooking before moving to the U.S. to be an au pair. She attended more cooking schools here, and eventually landed in the fine-dining world, working at Eleven Madison Park in New York City. She later moved to D.C., a city that was her favorite among the places she'd been in the U.S. She was doing private catering gigs there when, while shopping at the farmers' market one day, "I saw this amazing wood-fired oven. Andrew was there, and he was super cool — super-amazing personality," she recalls.

So she asked if he needed any help. "He said yes. In my head, I thought he had experience. He didn't have experience," she says. "But I fell in love with what he created at Timber Pizza. It was fun. It was vibrant. It was just a bunch of people having fun, which I'd never experienced in the cooking world before."

She and Dana also fell in love — they're married now, and welcomed a daughter three months ago.

Together they opened the first Timber Pizza Co. brick-and-mortar in 2016. Soon after, it was featured in Bon Appétit. "It was awesome," Moreira says of the momentum that gave the business.

The story also led to meeting an investor. "He said, 'Draw up your dream business,'" Dana remembers. He'd grown up eating bagels and frequenting old-school Jewish delis while visiting his grandparents in Florida, so he pitched the idea of opening a Jewish deli to Moreira.
"I said, 'Yes!' But, A, I'm not Jewish and B, I've never had a bagel," she recalls.

"She was coming at it from a blank slate," Dana adds. Which, it turns out, was a great thing. "When you go traditional, you're always battling nostalgia," he says. So instead, the two have created a brand that excels at playful takes on the traditional, with the bagel as the foundation.

In order to perfect the recipe, the couple traveled all over, trying bagels of all kinds. "It was so fun for me, because I had no idea about the culture and the history and the recipes," Moreira says. They landed on aiming for a mix of Montreal style, which leans sweeter, and the classic New York bagel. But perfecting the final product took a lot of trial and error.

"The first ones I made, I was like, 'I nailed it,'" Moreira recalls. "Andrew came and tasted it and said, 'This is bread with a hole in it.' ... He would always split the bagel, open it and smell it and say, 'This doesn't smell like a bagel.' Finally, I achieved the smell of a bagel."

The key to the bagel at Call Your Mother isn't the water — "That's bullshit," Moreira says when asked if the old 'It's the water' adage is true. Instead, she says, the deli's recipe includes lots of honey, and "honestly, a lot of love."
Call Your Mother debuted in 2018. "That's sort of where the plan ended," Dana says. "But it was a hit, and in order for staff to be able to grow and have real careers, you need to grow." It has since expanded to nine locations in the D.C. area.

When Call Your Mother started looking into new markets, the Mile High City seemed like a natural fit. "I'm pretty familiar with Denver. My best friend and my goddaughter live here, so I've been visiting twice a year for the last decade," Dana says. "And it reminds me of D.C. It's got all these great neighborhoods, and we want to be a neighborhood spot."

The week before opening, Dana was in town, keeping busy in his "art studio" — aka the parking garage behind the location off Tennyson Street — where he was painting chairs that were purchased at a South Broadway antique store and old cell phones that now hang on a wall at the ordering counter.

"Our whole ethos is Boca meets Brooklyn," Dana says. "Old and funky, with some new polish." That translates to bright pink and teal walls and plenty of fun touches, like flamingo wallpaper in the bathrooms, a decal of a manatee wearing a baseball cap and another of a bagel riding a jet ski. "We're not some polished chain coming in," he adds. There's also a window where patrons can watch the bagel-making process.

"The whole idea is that you can see the magic," Dana notes.
Right now, there are seven types of bagels on the menu, including classics like the everything as well as creative flavors like za'atar (a Middle Eastern spice blend) and maple salt and pepper. Singles are $2.75, or you can get a baker's dozen for $22. There's also a range of cream cheeses ($6 to $10 for an 8-ounce container), from roasted veggie to strawberry mint and candied salmon, which is "50 percent salmon," Dana says.

At both breakfast and lunch, you can choose from a wide variety of bagel sandwiches, including the Sun City ($10.50), a classic bacon, egg and cheese that's hit with spicy honey; the Thunderbird ($10.50), stacked with maple chicken sausage, eggs, American and cheddar cheese and spicy honey on the maple salt and pepper bagel (basically a hand-held Grand Slam); and the Denver-exclusive Jetski ($13), with brisket, pastrami, jalapeño and melted cheese.

Another Mile High-only offering is the tacos (three for $10) that pile brisket, pastrami, cheddar, cilantro and onion on a corn tortilla. Latkes, a gluten-free yuca cheesy bread and pastries like black-and-white cookies and babka muffins round out the menu, along with coffee made using a custom blend from Huckleberry. Expect lots of seasonal specials and new surprises, too. "We're not McDonald's," Dana notes. "The menu will change four times a year."

Huckleberry isn't the only Denver brand featured here. "We always try to get the best local products that we can. As much local stuff that we can use, we will," Dana says. So Call Your Mother is also working with Denver Chip Company, Rocky Mountain Eggs, Sherpa Chai, Morning Fresh Dairy and River Bear Meats, for its smoked turkey and bacon. It also sells za'atar mix from D.C.-based Z&Z, as well as peanut butter from its own brand, One Trick Pony.

Call Your Mother is supporting the community in other ways, too. Each month, it donates to a different nonprofit via a roundup program. Upcoming organizations that will benefit include Project Angel Heart, the GrowHaus, Food for Thought and We Don't Waste, which will also receive any leftover bagels.

Opening in Denver did require some recipe adjustments to account for both the altitude and the dryness,  "but that's why I'm having so much fun here," Moreira says. "Because it's a challenge thrown at you every day. Being here has been incredible. I don't want to leave."

She and Dana will both be back as the company works toward opening the next two Denver locations. As for more after that? "This is not some corporate, MBA business plan we've all mapped out," Dana says. "We're trying to give great food and great experiences every single day."

We'll take that as a maybe.

Call Your Mother is located at 4396 West 39th Avenue and will be open from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. daily starting May 19. For more information, visit callyourmotherdeli.com.