The scent of baking dough hangs thick in the air as Daniel Dunietz, owner and operator of Yetz’s Bagels, presides over his kitchen with a steadfast sense of urgency. Serving hand-rolled and boiled bagels from scratch out of a storefront still bearing the marks of its previous iteration, Yetz’s Bagels is the newest addition to Santa Barbara’s very small pool of local bagel spots. The Isla Vista shop, which has only been fully open for the better part of two months, marks a venture that puts quality above all else and comes years in the making for Dunietz.
“The bagels were actually part of the picture from the very beginning,” he said. “The original concept I had for a restaurant I came up with in high school. I was like 14 or 15, and the original idea was called ‘Blunts and Bagels,’ and it was a cannabis-themed bagel shop. A 15-year-old’s idea for sure.”
Dunietz, who grew up in Chicago, took his cannabis-themed bagel shop idea to the dorms of UC Santa Barbara when he started whipping up bagel-sandwich creations for his friends in Isla Vista using bagels purchased from a shop in Isla Vista.
