If you live near Joshua Tree, you’d have to venture down the hill to Palm Springs to find a Jewish deli. But a New York-style bagel might be at your fingertips. Richard Lee is baking bagels in his home kitchen in Twentynine Palms, the small town best known for its sprawling Marine base and blister ing summertime temps. Lee sells his bagels at a farmers market and at a few local shops under the brand name 29 Loaves. The motivation, the ex-New Yorker says, was to re-create “the bagel I remembered from my childhood.” The presence of New York-style bagels in the Mojave Desert raises at least 29 questions. For starters, can you really make a signature NYC foodstuff 2,600 miles from Manhattan? Well, you can get New York-style pizza almost anywhere, including Twentynine Palms. But not everyone would agree on bagels. “One woman came at me and said, ‘It’s all about the water. Are you hauling water from New York?’” Lee reports, shaking his head. If you’re making bagels in the desert, it had better not be about the water. So what is the secret? What is a New York-style bagel? “It’s boiled and then baked, so it has a crusty exterior with a chewy interior,” Lee explains. “It’s not just bread shaped like a ring.” That’s his opinion of Southern California bagels. In Los Angeles, though, a bagel culture is developing. In Virgil Village, Toronto-style Courage Bagels draws long lines. Boichik, which has been making New York-style bagels in the Bay Area, just opened in Los Feliz. Richard Lee gives his bagel rings another twist before putting them in a pot to boil. Boiling before baking, he says, is what makes a New York-style bagel. (Photo by David Allen, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG) Did Twentynine Palms beat Los Feliz to something trendy? Well, why not? The desert city has an active art community, a bookstore, a vinyl record shop and international visitors. “Someone called it the Brooklyn of the desert,” Lee says, chuckling. “It makes no sense, but I get it.” Born and raised in Flushing and Long Island, with a Korean father and Brazilian mother, Lee has worked in tech jobs, including for Microsoft, and started an information technology business in Manhattan, which he still co-owns. After a particularly severe snowstorm in 2010, Lee and partner Rebekah Meola abandoned the East Coast for L.A., where they got a rent-controlled apartment near The Grove. The move, Lee recalls, “allowed us to live the dream of never owning seven umbrellas again.” After discovering Palm Springs and then Joshua Tree National Park, the couple began spending more time in the desert. They moved to Twentynine Palms fulltime during the pandemic, enchanted by the landscape and small-town vibe. While the peace was welcome, Lee, an introvert, longed to form better social connections. He wondered if he could start a business. He’d been baking bread, to compliments from friends. Could he make bagels? He shipped early efforts to friends and family in New York for feedback. The taste was right, but not the texture, his sister advised. Lee tried boiling them longer, which did the trick. Shipping bagels prompted local commentary. “The guy at UPS said, ‘I don’t know that it makes sense to send bagels from the desert to New York,’” Lee tells me. He laughs. “It’s like sending snow to Alaska.” Richard Lee removes a tray of bagels from his solar-powered oven in his licensed home kitchen in Twentynine Palms. Under the name 29 Loaves, Lee makes up to 500 bagels a week for shops, individual orders and the farmers market. (Photo by David Allen, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG) Lee makes his bagels by hand in a licensed home kitchen. I watch one morning as he makes the balls of dough and turns them into rings by twirling them around his thumb. He boils a few at a time in a pot of seasoned water, then places them in a pan for baking. Adapting to the size of his pans, his bagels are smaller than the norm. This turned out to be a marketing plus. You might decide to eat two. Lee, Meola and I share bagels at their breakfast table with lox, onions and capers. These are darned good bagels. I had two. Perhaps Lee is correct that a New York-style bagel can be made anywhere. Even in the Mojave Desert, where the only subway is a sandwich shop and the rat race might be a literal race between rats. Breakfast over, I follow Lee on his rounds. He meets a delivery customer mid-street to fulfill an online order and then drops off bagels to Desert General Store, an early supporter. “These bagels have changed a lot of people’s lives,” co-owner Patrick Zuchowicki says. “People now have access to bagels, New York-style bagels, and that’s a big plus.” From there we head west on 29 Palms Highway to a small retail complex for artisans in Joshua Tree, The Shops at Zanny’s. In a closet-sized storefront, Cactus Flower Coffee Club owner Dillon McCord has curated a selection of whole bean, single-origin coffees. As a low-cost experiment in retail, Lee shares the space and the rent. “I think coffee and bagels all go together,” McCord tells me. Lee also supplies bagels to nearby Roadrunner Grab+Go, a convenience store owned by a former New Jerseyite. Now making up to 500 bagels each week, Lee, 56, has plans for automation and ideas for expansion, perhaps with delivery routes. Enthuses Lee: “I don’t know how I went from tech to baking, but it’s very exciting.” Jess Helle-Morrissey and daughter Alice from Minnesota buy a bag of bagels from Richard Lee’s table at the Twentynine Palms Farmers Market on March 29. (Photo by David Allen, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG) Most of his bagels are sold from his table in the 29 Palms Farmers Market on Saturdays. Besides local produce and crafts, food stalls represent Jamaica, Ethiopia, Thailand, El Salvador and more. In that environment, a table with a banner proclaiming “New York-Style Bagels” isn’t an outlier. His product has found an audience of locals and visitors. 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Does Minnesota have fresh bagels? “Yes,” Jess says. “Not like this, though.” David Allen leaves a hole in the newspaper Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, and follow davidallencolumnist on Facebook, @davidallen909 on X or @davidallen909.bsky.social on Bluesky. ...read more read less