Downtown Bethesda's New Bagel Shops Aren't Selling the Same Breakfast

"We received so much love the first go round that we knew we needed a bigger space," Andrew Dana said in late July. Dana co-founded Call Your Mother, and he was announcing the chain's return to Bethesda.

Eleven days after Call Your Mother opened in Woodmont Triangle, PopUp Bagels opened its first Maryland shop on Old Georgetown Road. The Banner put the walk between them at about seven minutes. Bethesda Bagels has been on Bethesda Row since 1982. On paper, that looks like three bagel shops crowded into one downtown. Look at what each one actually hands across the counter, though, and you find three different breakfasts. Only one of the three makes you choose between a sandwich and a sit-down table.

The Trailer Came Back as a Storefront

Call Your Mother isn't new to Bethesda. From 2020 until February 2025, the chain ran a pink-and-teal mobile "Lil' Deli" at a site on Old Georgetown Road. That trailer now operates in Riverdale, in Prince George's County.

The new shop at 4828 St. Elmo Ave. opened August 3. It has a teal facade with curvy pink sconces, and the name is painted in bright yellow across a curved wall. It is the chain's second location in Montgomery County, after Pike & Rose in North Bethesda. Its posted hours are 6:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. on weekdays and 6:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekends. That makes it the earliest of the three downtown bagel counters.

The menu is built around named sandwiches, including the Bacon Sun City, Thunderbird, Jetski and Royal Palm. The Bethesda online ordering page offers pickup and delivery, and you can build your own toasted or melty bagel sandwich. Three weeks after the opening, the Bethesda Beacon reported that Call Your Mother had won Best Bagel in Washington City Paper's Best of D.C. Bethesda Bagels was among the finalists.

Eleven Days Later, a Shop With No Sandwiches

PopUp Bagels took longer to arrive. Bethesda Magazine reported that the shop first planned to open July 24, moved to August 7 when construction ran long, and then hit more unexpected delays. It opened August 14 at 7607 Old Georgetown Road, on the ground floor of the Solaire apartment building. Adam Goldberg founded the chain in Westport, Connecticut, in 2021. By August it had nearly 50 locations, and its regional partner told The Banner that an Arlington storefront was coming soon.

PopUp works differently from the other two. You order bagels in counts of 3, 6, 12 or 30, and each order comes with schmear. Preorders are dozen-only, and delivery is available for every size. The regular spreads are plain and scallion cream cheese plus salted and brown-sugar-cinnamon butter, and limited-edition flavors rotate in. For the opening, the shop added a Bethesda-only Chesapeake Spiced Schmear.

The house method is "grip, rip and dip": you tear a hot bagel by hand and drag it through the spread. The menu has no sliced-open sandwiches. The Banner's visit found no indoor seating, just two small neon orange highboys outside and a bench near the curb. The reviewer also noted the bagels "still held up well" when she ate a few more bites at home hours later. PopUp's posted hours are 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily, the latest closing time of the three.

What the Prices Say About What Each Shop Sells

The Banner's August 14 review compared what a half-dozen bagels and one container of cream cheese cost at several shops in the area. Those are August prices and may have changed since, but the gaps between them tell you what each shop is selling.

The first three prices sit within a few dollars of each other. PopUp's base price is close to theirs too. The difference shows up when you add flavors. The Banner reviewer added four more schmears at $8 each, and her order of six bagels and five spreads came to $46. At PopUp, the spread is the product, and the bagel is how you eat it. The Banner described the business model as bringing customers back with new schmear flavors. At Call Your Mother, the product is the assembled sandwich, ordered by name.

The reviewer's conclusion fits that reading. She wrote that PopUp "won't replace my visits to more traditional, locally-owned bagel shops," and that "it just feels like its own, separate thing."

The 1982 Counter on Bethesda Row

That leaves the shop that was here first. Bethesda Bagels says on its own site that its first shop opened on Bethesda Row in 1982 and is "still there" at 4819 Bethesda Ave. It now runs as a regional operation founded at that address. The Bethesda Row shop keeps posted hours of 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., and all of its locations are open daily.

The original sits at the southern end of downtown and the two newcomers sit to the north. Bethesda Bagels was a finalist for the same City Paper award that Call Your Mother won in August, so the newest arrival shared that shortlist with a shop that has been on Bethesda Row for more than four decades. In December 2025, The Banner ran a blind tasting of bagels from across Montgomery County that included both Bethesda Bagels and Call Your Mother. It noted then that PopUp was planning a 2026 Bethesda opening.

For a Saturday, the three cover different needs. The Bethesda Row shop is the traditional counter, a few doors from the Row's other shops. Call Your Mother opens at 6:30 and is the place for a sandwich made to order, with pickup or delivery. PopUp serves a bag of hot bagels and several spreads to share with a group, and it opens daily until 4.

The Block Around PopUp Kept Filling In

The stretch of Old Georgetown Road around PopUp changed again this week. Shake Shack opened Friday, October 2, at 7535 Old Georgetown Road. It fills the 3,500-square-foot former SunTrust Bank space on the ground floor of the Element 28 apartment building, steps from the Bethesda Metro station, and its neighbors include Thai café Sweeteria, PopUp Bagels and Chipotle. The Bethesda Beacon reported that the original June 24 opening date slipped four times before the doors opened. Regular hours are 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and until midnight on Friday and Saturday. It is the chain's fourth Montgomery County location, after Kentlands, Westfield Montgomery Mall and Cabin John Village.

On opening day, Shake Shack pledged $1 for every sandwich sold at the Bethesda location to KID Museum, a Bethesda nonprofit that runs hands-on STEM programs for children and teens.

Put the posted hours side by side and that short block of Old Georgetown Road now serves food from PopUp's 7 a.m. opening to Shake Shack's midnight close on weekends.

In Woodmont Triangle, the next opening is a drink. Dear Matcha has announced its first stand-alone shop at 4928 Cordell Ave., with a grand opening on Saturday, October 10, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Cordell Avenue is a short walk from Call Your Mother's St. Elmo Avenue corner, and Dear Matcha will be one more morning stop on those streets.

Small openings like these are one way Catherine Triantis keeps up with what is changing block by block in downtown Bethesda, from St. Elmo Avenue to Bethesda Row. If you would like a closer look at what has changed around a particular street, Catherine Triantis is happy to talk it through with you. Let's Connect.