Jersey City may be home to some of the country’s best pizza, Italian and Indian food. But despite its reputation as one of the Garden State’s greatest dining destinations, the city is plagued by an embarrassingly bad bagel scene.
Locals have lamented the lack of bagel options for years. Outside of Wonder Bagels, a Jersey City-based operation with quality that varies at its several location, there are almost no bagel shops in the city of nearly 300,000.
After living in Jersey City for nearly a decade, Gianluca Fernicola and John Ballan stopped complaining and decided to do something about it.
READ MORE: New Jersey’s 53 greatest bagel shops, ranked for 2025
“I honestly kind of got tired of having to walk 15 minutes to the nearest bagel shop,” Ballan told NJ Advance Media. “There’s too many people and too many transplants from either suburban New Jersey and New York for there not to be bagels. It just doesn’t make any sense.”
Cheech’s Bagels, Jersey City’s newest bagel spot, opened near Hamilton Park in early May. The shop is named for Ballan’s late chihuahua, with whom he used to get coffee and a bagel with every morning.
Any new shop serving New Jersey’s favorite breakfast carb would be welcome in town. But rather than just churn out a typical bagel in a classic bagel shop space, Fernicola and Ballan are attempting to elevate both.
The bagels served at Cheech’s are specifically designed as vessels for sandwiches, a bit softer and chewier than your typical bagel. While biting through the crusty exterior of typical bagels often requires more effort and pushes sandwich contents out the back of the sandwich, these chew easier and maintain their structure as you bite in.
“A lot of people really like their breakfast sandwiches on rolls. We want to do everything on a bagel,” Ballan said. “So we wanted to get the people who still just want a really good bagel, but also prefer the rolls and kind of meet them in the middle.”
The toppings that go inside the sandwiches aren’t typical, either. “Ant’s Sandwich” features fried mortadella, provolone, dijon mustard and mayo — a tribute to New Jersey icon Anthony Bourdain’s favorite sandwich. The “Baby Luc” has tuna, olives, onion, lemon, arugula and roasted red peppers.
Even the eggs on their classic breakfast sandwiches are soft-scrambled instead of fried.
A bacon, egg and cheese bagel from Cheech's in Jersey City.Jeremy Schneider | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
“We do them with a very specific recipe,” Ballan said. “They’re not just the dry, fried eggs that are just thrown on the flat top.”
The only thing prettier than the bagels at Cheech’s is the space in which they are served — with inspiration drawn from Jersey diners, New York delis and even some European influences. Stools and banquettes for seating, classic deli-centric hand-painted signage from Jersey City-based Joe Lotto and a floor lined with tiles imported from Portugal make Cheech’s one of the most aesthetically pleasing bagel shops in all of New Jersey.
Some might scoff at the concept of “elevated” bagel sandwiches served in a shop with a European-tiled floor. But while this might not be everyone’s ideal type of bagel or your prototypical Garden State shop, Fernicola and Ballan took a big swing and connected with Cheech’s.
The bagels are definitely a touch chewier than I would prefer on their own, but that texture choice is logical when building a sandwich. And while the soft-scramble egg approach isn’t what New Jersey is used to with its Taylor ham (or pork roll), it’s impressive that a shop constantly serving a long line can cook with such finesse.
Is the Jersey City bagel drought over? The addition of Cheech’s (and B Bagels, which opened earlier this year on Grove Street and has impressed) suggests yes, finally.
Related coverage:
• New York’s hottest bagel shop is coming to N.J. Here’s where.
• N.J. bagel shop recreates Anthony Bourdain’s favorite sandwich. It’s morta-delicious.
• New Jersey’s 53 greatest bagel shops, ranked for 2025
• N.J. bagel shop etiquette: 7 ways to make sure nobody hates you
• Are ‘scooped’ bagels evil? An investigation.
Stories by Jeremy Schneider
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Jeremy Schneider may be reached at jschneider@njadvancemedia.com and followed on Twitter at @J_Schneider and on Instagram at @JeremyIsHungryAgain.