Despite its name, Bagel World in Newmarket, sells more than just bagels: it offers homemade bread, cookies, scones, as well as serves breakfast and lunch.
“We are part restaurant, part bakery,” said Sarit Bloshtein, who opened the Bagel World franchise in Newmarket in 2013. “You can find things in our location that you can’t find in other places.”
Bagel World opened its first restaurant on Bathurst Street and Wilson Avenue in Toronto in 1963 in a predominately Jewish area. There are also locations in Thornhill and Oshawa.
The other franchises focus on the bagels and the restaurants are “kosher style,” whereas Bloshtein serves bacon, peameal bacon and ham, as well as turkey and other types of meat at her Yonge Street restaurant.
“We have a universal menu, so anyone can enjoy it,” Bloshtein said. “This is also what makes us different. We are in an area that is not Jewish. We have adjusted our menu to the population around us. (Bagel World) is a very good franchise, very supportive with us but also allows me to fly, so I fly.”
Bloshtein started her career in Isreal as a teacher, but when her third child was born, she quit the profession to go back to school to become a pastry chef. When the family, including her husband and now four children, became Canadian citizens, Bloshtein opened Newmarket’s Bagel World.
“I love the area. I love the Newmarket people. We have the best people. It has become a community,” said Bloshtein, who is now serving the next generation of customers: the children who came in with their parents in their car seats, are now coming in by themselves with their friends.
New people still come in to enjoy her products that are “nothing like anything else you can find” in Newmarket.
“We bake daily using only the best ingredients,” and no preservatives, said Bloshtein, who works along side two other pastry chefs, as well as two cooks.
‘We have a whole line of cookies (as well as) brownies, short cake, carrot cake” and scones: sweet and savoury, as well as seasonal flavours such as pumpkin and gingerbread molasses. They also make their own cream cheese. On the restaurant side, they serve a variety of homemade items, with one of their most popular breakfasts being their Shakshuka, a Mediterranean-style dish made with tomatoes and other vegetables, slow cooked for four hours and served with eggs.
Also popular is their bagellini, “a flat bagel with different fillings. It’s a bagel and panini. It’s very popular.”
People can also enjoy a variety of homemade soups, sandwiches, wraps, burgers and more.
And of course, bagels, New York-style bagels.
“We make them in the old traditional way, boil, seeded, and then cooked in an open-fire oven. Every bagel gets direct fire. They are ready to eat in 15 to 16 minutes,” Bloshtein said. Unlike Montreal-style bagels, which are boiled in sweet water, New York-style bagels use plain water and direct flame.
Because the bagels are made without preservatives, Bloshtein said they will only last two to three days. Customers receive a bag with their bagels purchase with instructions to put the bagels in the freezer so they last.
The Newmarket location sells 20 different types of bagels, including classics such as plain and everything (one of the most popular flavours) as well as pumpkin and rainbow, which are made with different colours.
Bloshtein said they make between 40 to 50 dozen bagels every weekend.
The success of Bagel World is because of her colleagues, Bloshtein said.
“We are big, huge family. They are the best. The success of Bagel World is not just me, it’s them. They are amazing and I wouldn’t be able to do what I do without them.”
