Last weekend, we awoke majorly craving bagel sandwiches. It was the kind of craving only brought on by a night of drinking the evening prior. Unfortunately, Alexandria’s bagel scene is majorly lacking, to be charitable. At least it was…until Genuine Water Bagels recently came to town!

Over on our DC Restaurants Page, we just posted our full review of Old Town’s new go-to bagel spot. The bagels are absolutely legit and are by far the best bagels Alexandria has to offer.

But the fun doesn’t stop with fantastic bagels. The morning we first dined at GWB, we learned that in the afternoons, this odd little bagel shop attached to an Italian restaurant turns out New York style pizza and Italian sandwiches. I don’t know why they do this, but I love it!

We finished our round of bagels at about 10:45, and having already made the treck there, we decided that we couldn’t reasonably head back home until we tried out their pizza. But what to do during the hour between bagel breakfast and pizza lunch? In the name of research, and for your enjoyment (and ours), we decided to sample another breakfast spot along Old Town Alexandria’s South Washington Street.

A short walk took us to Firehook Bakery. We sampled cafe mochas, a chocolate tart, and a chocolate croissant. The mochas were good, but the croissant lacked flakiness and the tart was bland and one-note, with no real contrast of texture or flavor to break up the layers of chocolate in crust, ganache, and frosting. The coffee was quite nice, but second breakfast really didn’t come close to the perfection of first breakfast…or of lunch, which was next.

We returned to Genuine Water Bagels just in time for lunch. We each ordered a slice of pizza, and while not the revelation of the bagels, it was still quite good. Like our review of their bagels, our full review of GWB’s pizza can be found over on our Genuine Water Bagels Review.

So that was our morning of two breakfasts and one lunch, done in the name of food research. You’re welcome!

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