There is no doubt that life as a college student is busy, and sometimes it is hard to find time for the most important meal of the day: breakfast. At The Ultimate Bagel on 1217 N. Hamilton Street, a wide variety of options are available which are quick and easy so that breakfast doesn’t have to be skipped.

Twenty years ago, The Ultimate Bagel opened its doors in North Spokane and is now located next to Gonzaga’s campus. After several owners, Christi Chapman and her husband currently own the business and have kept the standards the same: homemade bagels and cream cheese made from good, quality products.

“We have a product that is different,” Chapman said. “We have a lot of control of the product and everything that goes into it, so we make sure that we use good quality ingredients.”

The menu consists of bagels and cream cheese that are made from scratch by Chapman’s husband who makes all the bagels inhouse. Customers can come in and order a bagel with cream cheese for around $4. They also serve breakfast and lunch sandwiches and soup.

“Every day I have a hard time deciding which bagel I want,” Chapman said. “The Snickerdoodle paired with pumpkin cream cheese is great. It’s a combination of sticky and sweet.”

Some  other options include traditional flavors such as blueberry and onion, as well as less common flavors such as sun-dried tomato and jalapeno asiago cheese.

Like the bagels, the cream cheese flavors come in the regular options such as plain and strawberry, and also in different flavors such as pumpkin and honey almond.

“I like the asiago bagel with either herb or sun-dried tomato cream cheese,” customer Susan McDaniel said. “You can’t get it anywhere else. It is just amazing.”

In addition to the bagel and cream cheese options, Ultimate Bagel also serves breakfast sandwiches such as, “Egg”cellent Bagel ($4.95) that consists of any flavor bagel, egg, Tillamook cheddar cheese and Canadian bacon. They also serve lunch sandwiches such as the bagel melt ($4.95) which is an open-faced bagel with melted cheese and a choice of meat.

All of the options on the menu looked amazing and it was hard to pick which kind of bagel to try. The employees were helpful and asked questions such as, “Are you thinking something savory or sweet?” I tried the sun-dried tomato bagel with plain cream cheese. The bagel could have been toasted a little more, but overall it was soft and the spread was creamy. The bagel was filling and kept me full long past lunchtime.

Contact Elise Van Dam at [email protected].