Zen of bagels at Whereabouts Café

Every day, the regulars filter in and out of Whereabouts Café, nestled in People's Plaza in Glasgow – you might not even know it's there.

But the folks who have discovered the huge airy bagels it offers get hooked and never look back.

Some come every day, some come once a week. College kids use the café as a study area. Older folks come in for their daily coffee and bagel fix. People's Plaza business neighbors come in during their lunch breaks.

"I see a lot of people every day over and over again," manager AJ Quintana says. "A lot of people haven't heard about us. But once they do hear about us and they come in and they fall in love with it, then they start coming in more regularly."

The location makes them a bit more of a hidden gem, Quintana points out, so he hopes to expand to a second location in the next year or so. But for now, he likes the small staff and the familiar faces.

"We're like a family," he says. "It's a tight-knit group and we like to keep it that way."

Quintana worked at Safeway and part-time at Whereabouts before fully committing to life at the café. The 24-year-old has been around for about five years now, managing for half that time.

The atmosphere and the people have hooked him, much like the regulars.

He tries to leave around 2 p.m. but as a manager, he sticks around until he's no longer needed for the day.

"It can get crazy in here," he says, as we sit at a coffee table once the café is closed for the day. "It's a little bit busy sometimes. Because of the way we staff, we try to keep it so it's less people per shift but everybody knows how to work efficiently."

Their busiest times are 7:30 to 10 a.m. and then during the 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. lunch rush.

"Our crazy time is weekends when we have double lines with the madness," owner Heather Love says. "Weekdays can be hit or miss – this is Glasgow."

Love and her husband bought the café in 2007 during a bad economic time. But she says they've turned the place around and have managed to make a success story out of the business.

Quintana is a large part of that story, rising up in the ranks to learn each part of the job to get where he is now.

"Basically, it is because of our amazing customers who have supported us and our employees who share our common vision, especially our manager AJ," Love says.

Quintana enjoys the lack of down time and staying busy makes the time go by faster. Though he doesn't necessarily make the bagels now – that task is relegated to a main baker and a back-up – he knows how to do it all, so he teaches me the bagel steaming process one afternoon.

Whereabouts steams their bagels rather than boiling them. The latter makes the bagels tougher and they can burn more easily. Quintana has me taste test a boiled bagel, a day-old bagel and a Whereabouts bagel fresh from the oven.

The difference is enough to convert me.

The bagel preparation process takes 24 hours, with the frozen bagels being trayed and left to rise for an hour or two the day prior to being baked. Once they've risen just enough, they head to the fridge to spend the night. A baker arrives at 4 a.m. to preheat the oven to 410 degrees Fahrenheit.

Trays upon trays sit on metal rolling shelving units. A dozen bagels on each tray thaw and get coated with their allocated toppings. Plain, egg, cinnamon raisin, jalapeno, sun dried tomato, cranberry orange and wheat bagels are counted out to meet the demands of the day.

Twice the number of bagels are sold on weekends than weekdays. Quintana estimates somewhere between 300 to 400 during weekend days, which includes bagels used for sandwiches.

Leftovers are often donated to a church since Whereabouts emphasizes freshness and won't sell day-old bagels. This goes back to Quintana's days dealing with grocery store produce. He's a stickler for freshness, especially with the café's large salads.

The café has been around since 1996 and has undergone a name change – from Oolala Café about four years ago – and a change in owners.

Once specific bagels are topped with their various seeds and cheeses, they're sent to the proofer, which steams the bagels and makes them rise a bit faster. Quintana tells me they can't be in there for too long or they'll get sticky and lose their consistency.

Next, they head into the gigantic oven. A heavy door opens to reveal metal racks that rotate the trays around for an even bake. After more steaming and baking, the bagels are done about a half an hour later. The oven gave them a delectable shine.

The process is rhythmic and takes a lot of waiting and timing, but the product is worth it.

I ask what his favorite coffee is. He doesn't drink it. Chocolate? Doesn't care for it. Favorite … bagel?

"I eat a lotta bagels," he tells me. And his teething toddler happens to love them, too.

The bagels remind me of the ones I crave during every visit to New York City.

"We just have a very different process from most bagel places because we're like a small gourmet batch," he explains. "That's why we don't have actually a whole lot of bagels and we don't make backups because we want all the dough to be fresh."

I spritz a tray of bagels with water to make them a bit stickier and dip them in a tray of "everything," which consists of poppy, sesame, garlic and onion. The everything bagel is most popular, Quintana says. Or it's a toss-up between Asiago and cheddar jalapeno.

"People like those zesty bagels, too," he says. And obviously the plain bagel does well.

"I still love it every day," Quintana says. "To come in here at 5 in the morning, you know you gotta like doing what you're doing."

Contact Ashley Barnas at (302) 324-2879 or abarnas@delaware online.com.