Housed in the historic Carolina Coach Garage and Shop, a five minute walk from Fayetteville Street, Transfer Co. offers 43,000+ SF of renovated warehouse and newly built space for food producers, makers, vendors, restaurateurs, their guests, and the local community.
One of these places is Benchwarmers Bagels – home to wood fired bagels and slammin’ coffee. After visiting I fully support their claims. I am not a huge bagel fan but this place could help change that.
Benchwarmers is a collaboration between Josh Bellamy and Sam Kirkpatrick of Boulted Bread and Andrew Cash of Jubala Coffee.
Their story began almost four years ago when head baker Josh Bellamy began to dream of applying the guiding principles behind his dark, rustic loaves to an uncharted medium. Benchwarmers uses a wood-fired oven, heirloom grains, extended fermentation, and fresh-milled, pre-fermented flour to make every bagel the very best version of itself: light and open but with serious depth of flavor.
What we tried:
Peanut Butter, Banana & Roasted Mallow on Sesame Seed
Spiced Honey on Za’atar + Sea Salt
I would order both again and am kinda getting hungry writing this post. If I could only get one of the two I would go for the Spiced Honey on Za’atar + Sea Salt as a breakfast meal and the Peanut Butter, Banana & Roasted Mallow as a dessert any time. Za’atar on a bagel was every bit as good as it sounds and I’m honestly surprised I haven’t seen that before. It was absolutely amazing and paired with the Spiced Honey it hit a lot of complicated flavor notes without feeling pretentious. Overall a great breakfast. The coffee was great but honestly a bit overshadowed by the meal.
This is a must stop and I would encourage you to go early and still prepare to wait. The line moves quickly and the bagels come out quickly but the demand is high. I’ve heard they run out some days so take this into consideration if you plan to go down for lunch or maybe even a mid-morning snack.
