Meet the family behind Hank’s Bagels and make its bright, lemony chicken salad at home, perfect for serving on a bagel, toast, lettuce or on its own.
When my family and I moved from West Adams to the San Fernando Valley in 2021, I was determined to find my new favorite spots as fast as possible. I’d lived in the Mid-City area for 10 years, and my personal foodie map was well-worn: République for pastries, Nong La for pho ga and eggrolls, Taqueria Los Anaya for burritos, Paper or Plastik for great coffee.
In the valley, I needed a new route. And one of the first stops I added to my list was Hank’s Bagels.
Family-owned and operated since 2019, Hank’s offers a concise menu of exceptional sourdough bagels and bagel sandwiches, each made with patience and attention to detail. From start to finish, bagels take between 36 and 48 hours to make, says owner Trevor Faris, who runs the business with his wife, Kelley. They grew up in Pasadena and Burbank, respectively, and are now raising their three sons in Kelley’s hometown.
I loved the bagels — crispy on the outside and with a slightly airier interior than other bagels — at first bite. Across the inside surface of the top-selling rosemary-sea-salt bagel, I smear on a light layer of Hank’s scallion cream cheese, while Faris suggests pairing it with his house-made honey butter. The cinnamon-chocolate-chip bagel, lightly toasted and buttered, is another beloved item in my house. It’s only sold on weekends, but that’s worked out for me, as I’ve become a Sunday regular.
One hot afternoon in July, I sat in my bedroom, air conditioning blasting, and asked Faris to recount Hank’s origin story over the phone. A drummer in his youth, Faris eventually found life on the road unfeasible — he’d met Kelley, and the pair wanted to settle down. A long-held interest in the culinary world inspired a pivot to restaurant work in L.A. Over the course of a decade, he moved from prep cook to sous chef to kitchen manager to culinary director before determining it was time to open a place he and Kelley could call their own.
What kind of food they would make was up for discussion, though. At the time, there was pizza and craft beer everywhere, and the couple also wanted to be practical; they had kids, and being able to pick them up from school was a priority. Serving just breakfast and lunch seemed best — and a bagel shop fit the bill.
“I like what’s traditionally done with a bagel, but I wanted to elevate the bread itself,” Faris says. “I love artisan bread, and no one was really making the bagel version. I wanted there to be a crackly, bubbly crust. Most bagels are just really dense — it just kind of looks like white bread in the middle — and I was like, ‘Why can’t it have the open crumb that sourdough bread has?’”
A slower fermentation process helps the team achieve that vision. They feed the sourdough starter on day one, put the starter in the mix on day two, let the dough rise for hours, shape it into bagels, refrigerate them overnight for a secondary fermentation, then boil and bake them bright and early on day three. The result is a product that draws in locals every day and has inspired the couple to expand their enterprise. The Burbank shop opened in 2019, followed by locations in Sherman Oaks, Calabasas and Brentwood. All locations close at 2 p.m. daily.
“We really care about what we’re making, and we’re detail-oriented,” Trevor said. “We have a small, tight menu, but every part of it is super thoughtful, down to how many seeds we can get to stick to our everything bagel.”
That care is notable across the menu. Take the No. 3 bagel sandwich, for example. Customers pick their preferred bagel, which then gets sliced and stacked with smoked fish, fresh dill, pickled onions, seasoned tomatoes, watermelon radish, salted cucumbers, capers, sprouts and a layer of house-made scallion cream cheese. It’s a tower of taste and texture, and it’s designed to impress.
“We knew people were going to come in and do the build-your-own-bagel thing, but I didn’t want it to feel like a Subway-type experience,” Faris says. “Each ingredient had to have flavor built into it. That’s why we season all of our tomatoes. It’s not just tomato — it’s tomato with olive oil and salt. And we do have raw red onion, but we also have pickled red onions. And we don’t just have bland cucumbers — we have salted cucumbers. I wanted to have our version of everything.”
If there’s a downside to painstakingly curating the perfect bagel menu, it’s that eating your own creations can get tiring. Faris calls it “bagel fatigue.” The good news is that Hank’s menu has a “Salady Things” section. Anyone who wants to stray from a loaded breakfast sandwich or a standard cream-cheese-covered snack might order sides of chicken, tuna, egg, whitefish or potato salad.
Ultimately, customer feedback fuels the Faris family. Running one restaurant, let alone four, is no easy feat in Los Angeles.
“The community sees the blood, sweat and tears that go into this,” Kelley says. “People tell us all the time, ‘I’ve been coming to you since day one, and the quality hasn’t changed and your employees are amazing no matter what store I go to.’ That says a lot. The world is such a difficult place to exist in these days, and people are really particular about where they spend their money. The fact that they want to spend their money at Hank’s is really incredible.”
How to Make Hank’s Lemony Chicken Salad
This is the chicken salad customers can order at Hank’s Bagels. Put it on a sliced bagel, a piece of toast, a bed of lettuce, or eat as is.
Ingredients
2 pounds chicken breast
20 grams preserved lemon peel, roughly chopped
1 lemon zested and juiced (plus one extra lemon on hand, if needed)
200 grams mayonnaise
22 grams scallions, thinly sliced
50 grams celery, thinly sliced
½ teaspoon black pepper, coarsely ground
½ teaspoon kosher salt, plus 2 tablespoons for poaching the chicken
Directions
1. Place chicken breast in a medium pot, cover with cold water and 2 tablespoons salt.
2. Bring to a gentle simmer and hold until the internal temperature of the chicken is 165 degrees F.
3. Transfer the chicken to a clean bowl, cover until it’s cool enough to handle, then shred by hand.
4. Combine preserved lemon, lemon juice and mayonnaise in a blender. Blend until smooth. Add the juice of another ½ lemon or a couple teaspoons of water if it’s too thick.
5. Add the lemony dressing to the shredded chicken and mix in scallions, celery, lemon zest, ½ teaspoon kosher salt and black pepper.
6. Refrigerate until chilled and serve.
