Milwaukee's Bagel Queen
COVER STORY: How a Wisconsin microbiology student launched Ruby's, a food truck serving some of the best bagels in the country.
Welcome to the weekend! Here’s what you’ll find in this week’s newsletter:
Cover Story: A visit to the Ruby’s Bagels, a food truck in Milwaukee’s Zócalo Food Truck Park, is one of our favorite ways to start a day.
Featured Field Guide: Download our Field Guide to Milwaukee, a 56-page mobile dining guide with 35+ recommendations for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and drinks all organized into a four-day itinerary. It’s free this month for paid subscribers!
The Order: A total solar eclipse will take place Monday, April 8, and we’re highlighting some favorite spots in the path of totality. If you’re looking to catch the eclipse in Cleveland, grab some spicy dumplings for lunch at an AsiaTown favorite.
Weekend Reading: Wisconsin’s small vacation towns, a trip through the subtropical heart of Florida, plus
explores the struggles of family travel.
In Pursuit of the Perfect Bagel
MILWAUKEE, WIS. — Traveling offers so many perks, and one is opening up people to new ideas. When Daniela Ruby Varela visited Cleveland from her home in Milwaukee, she fell so hard for Cleveland Bagel Company that she upended her life path. “I fell in love with the space — you could tell it was locally owned — and they had really good bagels,” she recalls. “At the time, we didn’t have anything here like that, just Panera and Einstein. Since I love cooking and baking, I was like, I think I’ll learn how to make them. So I came home and experimented with recipes for a whole year.”
Varela wanted a bagel that was lighter than New York-style ones, that “had a little bounce and were airy and soft inside,” she said. “They had to have a crisp outside but not a hard crust, so it would be easier for you to bite and not pull really hard when you’re eating a sandwich.”
Her bagels hit the mark. Ruby’s Bagels, which Varela began as a pop-up five years ago this week, are available at her truck in Zócalo Food Truck Park. To make them, Varela hand-rolls the dough, proofs the bagels in the refrigerator for 24 hours, then boils and bakes them. “We could make them in 8 hours, but 24 hours gives them more flavor,” she says. “Making bagels requires paying attention to every detail, including the weather. Is it humid? Is it dry? Bagels are very tricky.”
At Ruby’s, Varela serves six bagels in flavors like sesame, cranberry-orange, and the popular (and delicious) rosemary-sea salt, along with a few schmears, like green onion-cheddar and strawberry. She also offers sandwiches, including the BEC (bacon, egg, and cheese) and The Lox, with cold-smoked salmon, red onions, tomatoes, dill, and capers. The Guilty Guava, with cream cheese and guava jam, is a standout. “I grew up making guava and cheese empanadas with my mom, like a pie crust with guava jam and cream cheese,” Varela says. “I’ve always been obsessed with guava, so I thought, how can I add this to my menu? It’s so simple but it’s comforting for me.”
Before launching Ruby’s, Varela was a full-time student in microbiology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and was also working as a nanny and as a coordinator at St. Luke’s in the surgical ICU. She sold her bagels at pop-ups around the city, before landing a spot at Zócalo Food Park. “I knew I was not going to be able to focus on Ruby’s and do all those things,” she says. “In May 2019, I put my notice in for the nanny and hospital jobs and dropped out of college. That was that. I’ve been doing Ruby’s Bagels full time ever since.”
Joining her at Ruby’s are her mother and aunts. “My mom and two aunts have been going strong with Ruby’s since the beginning; this will be year five,” Varela says. “They are truly now the bagel queens in my eyes. My mom is just so picky when it comes to bagels. I was impressed by the way I was able to teach them how I was making bagels, and they took it and owned it.”
Varela has received plaudits for her bagels — Ruby’s Bagels landed on Bon Appétit’s list of the best bagels in the U.S. outside of New York, and she was named to the Milwaukee Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 list in 2022 — and she sees growth in her future. She currently makes her bagels in a commercial kitchen, but has plans to move Ruby’s to a brick and mortar location, which will allow her to expand the purposely tight menu a little bit. “I thought about when I was working two jobs and going to school that I wanted to go somewhere quick,” Varela says. “Once we have our brick and mortar, I’ll probably add another bagel and switch out our cream cheeses.” That space has been hard to find, but Varela is optimistic: “Bagels require more space than a regular kitchen, since you need walk-in coolers to make more bagels. I am trying to be patient since the perfect space is out there.”
Ruby’s is open Friday to Sunday from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.
636 S 6th St, Milwaukee, WI 53204
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A Spicy Lunchtime Favorite
CLEVELAND, OHIO — Here is one of our best travel tips: If you find a restaurant or bar you like, ask the people working there where else they like to eat and drink. That’s just what we did at Cordelia, which is how we found ourselves lining up for a cozy lunch at AsiaTown’s LJ Shanghai for spicy beef chaoshou, soup dumplings, cucumbers with garlic, and Shanghai pan-fried flat noodles. The thick noodles, slicked with savory sauce and tossed with bok choy and pork, were very good, but the chaoshou felt the most special. The beef wontons come set over a (very!) spicy, garlicky chile oil; mix everything up to coat the dumplings with the sauce, sesame, and green onions.
3142 Superior Ave, Cleveland, OH 44114
WISCONSIN
Hit the Back Roads: We’re talking all things Milwaukee at American Weekender this month, but Wisconsin’s small towns also make for a relaxing weekend trip. Writing for Midwest Living, Katy Spratte Joyce shares her list of 8 great small town getaways in Wisconsin. Sister Bay is of course a favorite but who can resist a summer trip to the Dells when it includes dinner at Ishnala Supper Club?
FLORIDA
The Wild Heart of the Sunshine State: This month in Garden & Gun, writer Latria Graham and photographer Corey Woosley take a trip through the subtropical heart of Florida. Their trip was leisurely, “roughly following the St. Johns River-to-Sea Loop, a 260-mile patchwork of roads and trails linking the coastal towns of northeast-central Florida to lakes, pristine natural springs, and the cypress-lined river.” Along the way they find unusual landscapes, cocktails, and pie. My kind of road trip.
LODGING
In Search of Accommodating Accommodations: It is surprising how monolithic the hotel industry can be. When you get down to it, most hotels are just selling identical rooms at various levels of quality. (We have been confounded by how few places cater to remote workers — especially Airbnbs.) Writing for her newsletter, The Carry On,
explores this topic from the perspective of a parent traveling with children. “By and large, there’s a family-sized hole in the hotel market,” she writes. “It made me wonder why more hotels aren’t thinking about ways to capture the family travel market, especially renovations or new builds that could be doing it with smart design.” We can vouch for Tourists in North Adams, Massachusetts, which offers kid-friendly bunk beds in some rooms, but it feels like there are opportunities for a smart hotel operator to capture these niche markets. Do you have a favorite hotel for family vacations or know a fantastic bed and breakfast that’s perfect for remote work? Share it in the comments — we’d love to hear from you.— Compiled by Kenney Marlatt
Want more? Chat with us on Substack, download our Field Guides, check out our archives, or follow us on Instagram @americanweekender. We’ll be back next week.
What made me click on the feature was the POPPY SEED COVERAGE ON THAT BAGEL! Not sure the capitalization adequately expresses my elation at that coverage. I need some Bold or Italic text. Maybe some neon flashing.
I’m definitely going to take the train up to Milwaukee after reading this.