The Great American Bagel Bakery

Pictures are worth a thousand words. See my tip posted. Let these words paint the breakfast bagel in your mind: bagel plain, hard, dry and reminiscent of the bread-​store bargain 4 day rack. Is that bacon or a prefab bacon appearing reconstituted meat food? Powdered egg reconstituted in the shape of a flying saucer, and probably better served as one. Cheese anyone? A smidgen of over cooked crusty cheese food petrified version. There you have it hungry airport dwellers of the early AM. If you are the mood for an adventure in bad taste go for it — otherwise, run on down to Starbucks. Just don’t expect sweet southern hospitality from eyelash chick.

When I arrived at the BHM airport there wasn’t much selection of restaurants to choose from. I was going to go to Chick-​fil-​a like everyone else but saw a little bagel shop next to it that everyone seemed to be ignoring. Chick’s limited menu items ranged from 600 – 980 calories and I didn’t even really enjoy their food that much. For 500 calories I settled on a chicken breast sandwich with mayo, Dijon mustard, lettuce, tomato, and red onion, on a Tomazzo bagel. The sandwiches can be served hot or cold. After being toasted, the bagel was like soft pizza crust. One bite into the sandwich was heaven. I was so glad I chose this place. It was delicious! So delicious, I forgot to take a picture! So delicious, I almost walked back to the bakery and ordered another one for the next day. Anyone reading this review, don’t just choose Chick-​fil-​a because it’s the only well known chain within the airport! Go to The Great American Bagel Bakery… it’s so much yummier!

On May 25, 2015 while I was eating Chikfila around 7:50am I was watching 2 ladies that worked behind the counter of The Great American Bagel Company at the Birmingham airport. They were killing flies with a electric fly swatter behind the counter including directly above all the bagels. They were also touching the bagels with the electric fly swatter. After seeing this I would highly recommend not eating here unless you want extra protein on your bagels.

Make sure to pay cash, I bought a bagel here on a flight out of town and got my card info stolen & cloned. Luckily my bank knew I wouldn’t be using my card at a Dollar General in Birmingham when I had just flown to a different state. The stale bagel was definitely not worth the hassle.

Beware! I would rate this bagel shop a 0 if I could. I ordered a Cinnamon Crunch bagel split. There is an up charge for this flavor over most others. I paid. What I received was a stale, hard as a rock, flavorless bagel that was absolutely disgusting. I ate one bite and pitched it on the plane. I sent the company an email thinking that they may have just had an inventory issue and would want to make things right. I never received a response!!! There is a breakfast place in C gates that has a great bagels. Worth the very short walk for something edible.

Very bad choice! I chose this food area because of my great experience with food quality and service in other cities, however, the brand disappointed today! Server was rude, appeared truly irritated when she had to speak up to ask me more than once which ingredient I wanted (she was speaking so low couldn’t hear her!), they were out of two specialty bagels, a meat, a cheese… and the quality was so disappointing. Soggy bagel, not sure the lettuce was fresh either. Another customer standing in line getting similar treatment said «I should have gone to chic filet». I will truly think twice before I go to another The Great American Bagel bakery.

Airport breakfast — a toasted bagel with cheese and egg shouldn’t be this complicated or this slow. But the order taking was slow, the order preparation was slow and the payment taking was slow. Once I had my nicely wrapped bagel unwrapped and ready to eat, the flavor was good but the «toasted» was seriously lacking. Putting it under a hot lamp for ten seconds does not make for a toasted bagel, folks.
I’d suggest you keep an eye on it and have it go through the toaster a second (or third?) time.

We were stranded in the airport due to the snowstorm and these guys were open all night to provide the much needed coffee and food. Staff were super nice. Nothing beats hot coffee and hot bagel at 3am when you’re sleeping in an airport.
THANK YOU

I was relieved to find healthy food there when stranded at the airport during the snow storm. this was the only business stayed over all 48 hours to provide much needed energy for people who used the terminal as home.

Ok it’s airport food— you don’t expect much… Just a hot cup of coffee and a bite to eat before your flight. But this place does a good job at both– a decent cup of coffee was had and a buttered and toasted cinnamon bagel were eaten– and although it wasn’t a New York bagel, the friendly sales help and quick service made it an ok place to start your flight

Not living up to their name on many levels: how can a place named for bagels hand out bagels that were so recently defrosted that they are still wet? Ew. And, it doesn’t help that there are only two types of cream cheese (plain and reduced-​fat plain) to mask the damp dough.

Breakfast before flight, fast and tasty. Airport food is always expensive but thus was not THAT bad.
Had one of their breakfast bagels and coffee.