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Los Angeles’s stuffed bagel craze has finally worked its way up north to Campbell – now, with an Asian twist.
Recently popularized by Calic Bagel after taste tests and at-home recreations went viral on TikTok in April, these bagels are partially cut, stuffed with a cream cheese filling, then dunked into flavored butter and baked for extra crispness. And while Calic only offers three flavors (garlic, habanero and pizza), a new shop in Campbell opened June 7 with a variety of rotating Asian-inspired flavors (think cheesy corn with Kewpie mayo or miso scallion). The bagels are unique too – it’s a hybrid creation of chewy New York style bagels and soft Asian bread, a recipe developed by owner Emily Tran.
“I wanted to provide something that was unique, especially in this area,” Tran said. “There’s two traditional bagel shops down the block, so having a menu that was different was one of my goals.”
This is Tran’s debut into the food and beverage industry, having previously worked as a product manager in a corporate office. During the pandemic, she was interested in gaining experience owning a business, so in late 2023 she acquired Bagel Bar, a locally-owned Campbell bagel shop since 2018.
“I realized I grew unhappy because it wasn’t necessarily my business; it was someone else’s business,” she said. “And as an Asian American, I had a lot of flavors I wanted to explore that I didn’t think would be received as well with that market. And so I thought rebranding into a different shop … was a good way for me to create something that was more in line with what I had in mind when it came to owning a business.”
Tran hadn’t planned on closing Bagel Bar upon acquiring it, and she said it was a difficult decision to officially close the shop in the beginning of May. With the rebrand, she and Bloom Bagel co-founder Aaron Kim are more freely able to experiment with the flavors they’re passionate about. Tran hopes to eventually introduce bagel flavors like Sriracha, kimchi, ube and black sesame.
“I’m a big foodie,” Tran said. “I love to explore flavors, especially once launching this business and finding how much people loved it and spending more of my free time just thinking about what kind of dishes I can force into a Bloom bagel style.”
All bagels are boiled and baked fresh in the morning, and it’s recommended to arrive early because Bloom Bagels often sells out around noon.
“The priority right now is to scale, because I feel bad when we sell out really fast and people travel (from) an hour away, they realize too late that we’re out of bagels,” Tran said.
In addition to stuffed bagels, Bloom Bagels specializes in drinks made with organic Linea coffee, organic Straus milk, housemade syrups and flavorings and imported Japanese tea. Find beverages like Einspanner (an iced drink made from espresso poured over whipped cream and milk), black sesame latte and hojicha latte, with recipes developed by Kim, a Campbell native.
“I actually see a lot of old school friends from 15, 20 years ago in the area, but it’s quite cool to just see people in the area, see familiar faces,” he said.
Kim began working in coffee about eight years ago, starting in Alexander’s Patisserie in Mountain View. During the pandemic, his sister opened Jina Bakes in Japantown San Francisco, and Kim implemented the coffee program. After that, he worked as a solo barista at Microsoft’s experience center before Tran asked if he would be interested in developing a coffee program for her bagel shop.
Kim takes a made-from-scratch approach with his drinks, scraping the seeds out of vanilla beans to make the vanilla syrup that goes into vanilla lattes and creating his own chocolate mix from Valrhona chocolate for mochas.
“I think it’s really worth taking those steps, even if it is a simple drink,” he said.
Tran said she chose to name her business “Bloom” for two reasons: It conveys the meaning of “growth,” and the stuffed bagels resemble a blooming flower.
“When thinking about the journey of acquiring Bagel Bar and going through the challenges of running and learning from all my mistakes, I realized how much I’ve grown through the experience, which is one of the main reasons why I wanted to take on this endeavor in the first place,” she said.
Only a month since opening, Tran and Kim are working on streamlining the operations process, but they look forward to the possibility of opening more locations of Bloom Bagels in the future and are grateful for all the support they’ve received from the community.
Bloom Bagels, 519 E Campbell Ave., Campbell; Instagram: @bloom_bagels. Open Wednesday to Sunday 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
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