We are a family of food obsessives.

The story of the Harman family is a story of food, and if we were to pinpoint the beginning of this story, it would be at our Gran’s home kitchen at Pine Tree Avenue, Coventry, another lifetime ago.

Family Business

Two pans would sit atop the stove: one filled with the mahogany richness of her latest curry, and the other glistening with the pearlescence of steaming white pilau. From these two pans, everything else would flow: congregation, conversation and memories that would echo for eternity.

Her son, our uncle George would take this spirit of hospitality and set up ‘Maz’s Deli’ on Streatham High Street in the late 1980s. Heavily influenced by delicatessens of New York City, Uncle George and his partner set up a joint serving freshly baked bagels and house made salt beef cured with saltpeter. It was here that our family first made the connection to this most amazing of baked goods.

George, Emma and Jack Harman created The Hutong with this spirit, albeit embellished with their own experiences of food and hospitality.

Plymouth Original Bagel House Est. 2017

First there was the cafe

On the 25th April 2017 The Hutong Cafe opened its doors for the first time. Inspired heavily by George’s time in Australia, The Hutong rode the third coffee wave and became an instant destination for coffee heads in the city aching for expertly brewed cups of the good stuff. Jack and Emma who had just returned from the Far East,set to developing a menu and service level inspired by the fast dynamic pace of Beijing and Singapore, one that dovetailed beautifully with the innovation extracted from Antipodean coffee culture. The Hutong was born.

Events were a huge part of the first Hutong experience. Live music, spoken word, DJ sets, record shop pop-ups, coffee markets, boat parties and more, all became a deep part of The Hutong experience. We partnered with national and local brands such as Plymouth Gin to create weekly evening events and hosted pre-parties for music festivals such as Knee Deep. The Hutong was synonymous with culture and hospitality in Plymouth.

We’d planned to close in the Autumn of 2019 for an extended period, as the building needed major refurbishment, and so in October of that year, the Hutong closed its doors to begin a period of hibernation whilst the building was upgraded.

It was during this period that the pandemic rocked the entire world. This slowed the refurbishment down to a crawl and during this period, the three owners had withdrawn to plan phase two of their business, and home kitchen experimentations with salt beef and boiled jewish breads with a funny old hole in them, gave birth to a bold new vision for the business.

Plymouth’s Original Bagel House

On January 23rd 2021, after 15 months of closure, The Hutong reopened its doors with a dramatic new menu: the bagel had arrived. And not just one Hutong, but two. A bakery was born.

Our second site is our production unit, a stone’s throw from our cafe. Our bakery hand rolls, kettle boils and stone bakes fresh bagels each and every day.

Every bagel made here is hand rolled, kettle boiled and stone baked. Seven days a week.

In the cafe, the menu is centered around classic bagel culture like traditional classics such as salt beef (Devon reared and grass-fed) which is brined in house, salmon lox as well as more British fare such as streaky bacon and egg.

Plymouth’s Original Bagel House concerns itself with two things, and two things only: great products and great service.