#Utopia bagels in new york free

“Those are the things that are not talked enough about. It’s how much water you put in, it’s how much, when you proof, you let in the air,” Spellman says. Honoring Shabbat and doing something every Friday is tradition and tradition is important.“If water was the main thing that happened to a bagel that makes it great, there are about five bagel stores around my store here - they would make as good of a bagel as we make,” says Utopia Bagel shop co-owner Scott Spellman on the myth that New York City water is what gives its bagels the reputation as the best in the country. I have a strong sense of family - my son, my brother, and my wife work here. Those things make you stand taller and give you pride. We have challah and rugelach and special hamantaschen, and make sure we have enough for Friday.

My second daughter taught in Israel for a year, and every once in a while her friends from Israel come and we get together for Shabbat. On Fridays I love to cook for my family and I love to break bread with people. We’re special because we’re here, and I have a great parking lot! If you have that special product and person, the location doesn’t matter.Īnd lastly, because this is a Shabbat-themed newsletter, what are you doing this Shabbat? It took my perseverance to get us into Food & Wine and New York Magazine, being compared to Russ & Daughters. If I was in the city, I would have been listed as the best bagel place 20-30 years ago. I look out for my employees.ĭo you think your location, being far from Manhattan, is a hindrance to business? Some customers are racist and I don’t stand for that. Here, we have Mexican workers, Dominican, Venezuelan. I was here every single day during the pandemic and we fed 50 local families. We were one of the only places that stayed open. The other day, a woman told me I gave her son cookies whenever he would come into the shop, and that made him feel special and he doesn’t always feel special.

#Utopia bagels in new york free

I give kids cookies because when I was little, my dad took me to get penny candy and they used to give me a bag with a free piece of candy and I never forgot that. To me, my whole life, the bagel means feeding people and I love feeding people, I love leading them on a food journey, especially kids. Someone can have same experience his great-grandfather felt. Here at Utopia, our bagel stands out more than other places because we serve four generations. NYC makes two things better than any state: pizza and bagels, because we’ve been doing it longer.

One of them is the Michael Jordan of rolling. We don’t cut corners! And my hand rollers have been here 22-27 years. We also use an ingredient a lot of places don’t, and that is liquid malt in place for sugar. My bagels are also made in a 1947 Middleby Marshall oven, whereas a lot of bagels tend to be doughy, made in steam ovens, a whole rack at a time, and most places bake early and shut their ovens off by 11. We do it the old-fashioned way: hand-rolled, kettle boiled. My friend owned this shop since 1981 and I became a partner in 2015.Ī few things: crispiness of the outside and that softness on the inside. I was managing a restaurant at time in Astoria but did Fresh Direct, making nine different frozen bagel flavors, which sold millions of dollars in frozen bagels a year. Eventually Fresh Direct asked his partner to make frozen bagels. My friend whose father owned a shop worked here. This was back when you had one kind of bagel with butter, before everything bagels were a thing! I ended up here in Queens because my wife grew up in this neighborhood. My best friend’s father owned a bagel store in Howard Beach where I started working at 14 years old. Always give respect and never expect it back. At times, I put on tefillin and I’ve been in a minyan, but what’s important is. Sometimes growing up, you’d know you’re Jewish and you’re around Italians and don’t want it to be known you’re Jewish, but as I got older, I felt cheated because we didn’t we do more things. I have friends that are rabbis and it’s important for me to show respect for religion.

I didn’t go to Hebrew school - my bar mitzvah portion was in English - but I respect religion. I grew up Jewish but wasn’t brought up religious, but every summer, we’d visit a bungalow colony in the Catskills in Monticello. I grew up in Brooklyn, in Canarsie, across from the Glenwood projects in an era where the whole block played together.