Bagel + Slice is the best bagel spot Highland Park has

Most neighborhoods on the east side have had to choose: bagels or pizza. Bagel + Slice, at 4751 York Blvd in Highland Park, skipped that negotiation entirely and put both under one roof, which turns out to be exactly the right call for a block that needs a place to land at any hour from morning through evening.

The bagels are New York-style, which means dense, chewy, and built to hold something. The cream cheese comes in varieties worth thinking about, and the egg sandwiches are the kind of thing you eat on the way somewhere and think about on the way back. The pizza by the slice handles the other half of the day without asking you to rethink your afternoon.

Counter service is quick and the prices are honest, which matters on York, where a lot of people are eating on a real schedule and not a leisure one. This is not a place where you wait twenty minutes for someone to compose your order. You walk up, you say what you want, you eat it.

The room holds a 4.4 from the people who actually come here regularly, which for a neighborhood staple doing volume at breakfast and lunch is a solid number. It opens at 8am and runs until 9pm daily, seven days, which means it covers the morning commute, the midday errand, and the late-evening nothing-else-is-open moment all at once. That kind of reliability is underrated and worth rewarding.

Go on a weekday morning, order a bagel with whatever cream cheese sounds best that day, and if it is past noon, add a slice. You will see immediately why this corner of York works.

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