Latest news with #bagels
CBS News
a day ago
- Entertainment
- CBS News
Lewisville bagel shop wins awards and fans with New York style bagels
Thousands of bagels, every day, boiled and baked out of an unassuming storefront in a strip mall in Lewisville — Starship Bagel, the brainchild of Oren Salomon. "Bagels were there in almost every single important moment of my life," recalled Salomon. "Bar mitzvahs, bris, the morning after weddings." He made New York bagels for his friends years ago, and they wanted more. He didn't start Starship Bagel until 2021 after taking over his dad's cafe. However, that round piece of dough already consumed his life as he consumed it. "In many ways, I feel like I didn't choose the bagel," Salomon said. "The bagel chose me." And the bagel has been giving back to Salomon. He recently won Schmear of the Year at the 2024 New York BagelFest for his basil schmear and won Best Bagel for his plain bagel. Starship Bagel can crank out thousands of bagels every day, but if you ask Salomon, an admittedly bagel purist, it's the plain bagel that has his heart. "When I bite into a bagel," Salomon explained. "It transports me to all of those childhood memories, and I get a chance to reconnect with that every morning." The store is being recognized for its success too. On June 6, it was featured on Food Network's 'Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives' with Guy Fieri. It was also nominated for a James Beard Award for Outstanding Baking — the first bagel shop to be nominated in that category. The awards are on June 16.
Malay Mail
27-05-2025
- Business
- Malay Mail
How 36 Degree Bakehouse got customers clamouring after their Earl Grey lemon yuzu bagels and peach oolong pretzels
KUALA LUMPUR, May 27 — You might have noticed these two perky pastry chefs at a night market or weekend bazaar near you. With a cheerful smile, they will be thrilled to explain every single flavour of bagels on offer to you. This is the duo behind 36 Degree Bakehouse: Lee Min An, 25, and Kong Cheng Yee, 24. Prior to launching their bagel business, they were both graduates in pastry-making at local culinary and baking schools, and had worked at a multi-chain bakery for a couple of years. Lee shares, 'We had often wondered why there weren't bagels with fillings. This was prior to 2023, when the majority of the bagels had their accompaniments separately served on the side.' Today their filled bagel flavours run the gamut from healthy options such as Oat, Poppy Seed, and Black & White Sesame as well as more decadent offerings including Double Chocolate, Matcha Milky and Coffee. Those who prefer savoury bagels aren't left out: try their Baked Chicken Sausage, Jalapeño Cheese or Ham & Cheese. A bit of Taiwanese-Japanese flair comes through in their Peanut Sesame Brown Sugar Mochi and Charcoal Taro Floss bagels. Popular bagels: Earl Grey Lemon Yuzu (left) and Charcoal Taro Floss (right). — Picture courtesy of 36 Degree Bakehouse However, the customer favourite has to be their Earl Grey Lemon Yuzu bagels. Kong explains, 'Earl Grey and lemon yuzu are both popular traditional fine dessert flavours, but we never experienced them together on pastries. The results were surprisingly good, both from a recipe perspective as well as our customers' acceptance.' Even with positive feedback from their regulars, the reality is that there are so many bagel makers these days. How does 36 Degree Bakehouse stand out from the pack? Kneading and rolling dough. — Picture courtesy of 36 Degree Bakehouse Lee shares, 'A lot of bagel places are more traditional where the customer is required to dine in to get the 'full' experience. We aim to change that by trying to make the bagel eating experience more hand-held and on-the-go.' This approach was easier said than done; solely selling online felt too impersonal in the beginning, whereas opening a physical shop felt like too much of a risk. It turned out that launching a bagel business was more than simply kneading and rolling dough. Kong recalls, 'When we were starting 36 Degree Bakehouse in the early days with little to zero capital, we had to look at other options to have the most impact while also providing a closer relationship with our customers for product feedback.' Limited edition bagel flavours include Pistachio Raspberry (left) and Garlic Cream Cheese (right). — Picture courtesy of 36 Degree Bakehouse Therefore, rather than depending solely on an online presence (where there was too much noise with various competitors, including those with an advertising budget), the duo decided to venture into night markets as their main channel of sales and promotion. Lee says, 'We had countless sleepless nights, spending most of our time baking and running our stalls at various night markets. That took a little while to get used to.' Being a pastry chef and running a pastry business are two different skill sets, of course. This is a lesson many eager young pastry chefs have had to learn when they try to start their own business after a few years working at bakeries or even when freshly graduated. Peach Oolong Pretzel (left) and Strawberry Cream Cheese Pretzel (right). — Picture courtesy of 36 Degree Bakehouse Kong agrees: 'While we were experienced in pastry making, the initial challenges we faced were in learning how to do a business. There are many other factors that need to be considered.' Happily, their business has stabilised substantially compared to their humble beginning. A stream of regular customers. A full-fledged website where they can announce new or limited edition bagel flavours such as Pistachio Raspberry and Garlic Cream Cheese. They have also begun to expand their repertoire to include non-bagel baked goods, from sourdough breads to focaccia. Their latest products are pretzels, with unique flavours such as Peach Oolong and Strawberry Cream Cheese. Best of all might be the continued joy in working together. Of course, things can always be even better, as they both share: 'The big dream is to have our own little shop!' Working together. — Picture courtesy of 36 Degree Bakehouse 36 Degree Bakehouse Pre-order 2 days in advance here. IG: @36degreebakehouse Also catch them at weekly markets: Mon (SS2), Wed (Taman Connaught), Sat (Setia Alam) and Sun (Kepong Baru) 5pm-10pm
CBS News
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBS News
New Denver deli Call Your Mother is hard to miss in Central Park neighborhood
Bagel fans on Denver's east side have a new place for breakfast. "Call Your Mother" hosted a friends and family event for Central Park residents Thursday morning. The 'lil deli' is hard to miss. It's in a bright pink truck located in the parking lot of the former Denver airport control tower off 32nd Avenue and Central Park Boulevard. The Jewish deli offers bagels, sandwiches, latkes, coffee and vibes. "We like to serve up what we call GFEs, which are great freaking experiences. That's what we talk about. How can we give GFEs to ourselves and to our customers?" said district manager Chris Bongiovanni. Call Your Mother's Denver Central Park Lil' Deli opens to the public on Friday. They're open weekdays from 7 AM to 2 PM and on weekends from 7 AM to 3 PM. This is the fifth Denver location for the Washington DC based deli.
CTV News
11-05-2025
- Business
- CTV News
Iconic Vancouver bagel shop Siegel's Bagels celebrates 35 years
All anniversaries call for cake and candles, but the celebration at Siegel's Bagels next Friday is a double-whammy for the Vancouver business that would call for 124 candles in total. While the store marks 35 years of doing business, its owner Joseph Siegel will be celebrating his 89th birthday. To mark the occasions, the store will be throwing a shindig at it's Kitsilano location and the first 100 customers will be given a free bagel slathered with cream cheese. Siegel was born and raised in Montreal, a city famous for its distinctive handmade and wood-fired bagels. When he moved with his family to Vancouver in 1974, he says he felt the urge to bring a taste of home with him after the the only varieties he could find locally were supermarket offerings that were 'more like a bread with a hole in it.' Vancouver was so unfamiliar with the chewier and denser style bagel that Siegel had to request a permit and bring in a mason from Montreal to build the required wood-burning oven, as nobody locally had the expertise. 'There were a lot of Montrealers that had moved to Vancouver, and I had said, 'If I can get half of those to come and try my bagels, I'll be able to develop the business.' That was my main goal,' he says. Siegel set up a small table beside the main store on Cornwall Avenue and, much like what guests can expect this weekend, gave away bagels with cream cheese in the hope word would spread. Before long the shop gathered a cult following, attracting loyal customers that, Siegel says, still visit to this day. 'The secret to success with the type of business we have is number one, the product. You have to have a good product. And number two, you have to have the service, and I think we have both,' he says. Now 89, Siegel lives on Salt Spring Island and has left the business in the hands of his daughter, Parise. 'The thing that we're super proud of is that we have 80 per cent of our staff who have been with us for over 20 years. We're like a real family there. We've built this family community within the store,' says Parise. Keeping the business within the family has ensured the crowd-pleasing recipes remain true to the store's very beginnings, which is lucky, really, she says, because few regular customers are on board with change at Siegel's Bagels. 'Some things that we have can't change, they have to stay the same. Even if we do a renovation in the store, it throws customers off a little bit and they want you to know they don't like it,' she laughs. 'Going from a small business to something bigger, sometimes people will describe it as becoming more corporate. People like the homegrown element and I think that there's less and less of that these days, and so customers love to know that we have kept things quite original from where we were when we began.' Parise says many of her fondest memories revolve around the comfort food. 'I remember going back to Montreal as a young child, we would visit four to five times a year to be with family for different holidays and occasions, and we would always fill up our suitcases with Montreal-style bagels and bring them home,' she says. 'We'd slice them and keep them in the freezer and all our friends who were from Montreal would come over and hang out and eat bagels with us, because you couldn't get bagels like this in Vancouver back then.' She says she hopes to create heartwarming memories for others in the way they were created for her when she was younger. As for whether she ever gets sick of the donut-shaped breads, after 35-years of business and a lifetime of consuming them, she says, surprisingly, she's never quite had enough. 'I get asked this question often, and the truth is I just never get tired of them,' she laughs. 'If I'm ever starting to feel that way I'll just create a new flavor, but there's usually so many different ones we offer, there is always something that I feel like eating.' Currently the shop offers 14 flavours, spanning everything from the classics to exciting iterations like sun-dried tomato, blueberry and jalapeno. 'I talk to my customers and they say 'I've been coming here for 35 years, week in, week out, and I never get tired of them',' she says. 'There's just something about them that will always have you coming back for more.'
