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More than a decade before the New York Times put the Bay Area on the bagel map in 2021, praising Berkeley’s Boichik Bagels and San Francisco’s Midnite Bagel, Jewish cookbook maven Joan Nathan was raving in the same newspaper about bagels from Berkeley’s Baron Baking.
To say that the exposure helped Baron founder Dan Graf’s business is an understatement. Now, after more than a decade running his whole-sale operation, he’s turned to retail with two partners, who opened Bageltopia in April on University Avenue in Berkeley.
The New Jersey native started experimenting with bagel making while working at Berkeley’s Saul’s Deli in the early 2010s and eventually left to start his own wholesale bagel business. By 2020, he had some 50 accounts, delivering to cafes, coffee shops and restaurants throughout the Bay Area. As a wholesaler, though, he felt limited in how much he could do.
Then when the Covid-19 pandemic struck, knocking his accounts down to three, Graf had to let go of his entire staff and do everything on his own. So when he got an offer to become a partner in a new retail bagel shop, the opportunity was too good to pass up.
His partners are Jeff Davis, who also owns Fellini Coffeebar next door, and Mike Daillak, who owns a popular brunch spot in Albany called Sam’s Log Cabin.
Davis, who is the Jewish one among the trio, was born and raised in Detroit, a city with a strong bagel culture. Graf is from heavily Jewish Bergen County in New Jersey. Good bagel places were so ubiquitous there, he said, that he didn’t realize that bagels were a Jewish food until he moved here. (Graf himself isn’t Jewish but said half his childhood friends were.)
Given how many excellent bagels now exist in the Bay Area, any bagel shop must find ways to stand out from the pack.
For one thing, Bageltopia is smoking its own salmon and claims that it’s the only East Bay bagel outlet doing that.
“When you get packaged smoked salmon, it can be frozen multiple times in some cases,” said Davis. “It can come out mushy, but ours is plump and fresh and really beautiful.”
Bageltopia also makes its own vegan “lox” from thinly sliced carrots, one of many options on its menu for plant-based eaters.
Davis previously owned Pizza Moda, which years ago became known for its vegan offerings and vegan brunch. It was the first pizzeria in Berkeley to offer vegan pies.
“Almost half of our audience were vegans,” Davis said. “If you’re really serving them correctly, and the vegan offerings don’t seem like an afterthought, and you put your heart into those items, they will remain very dedicated and spread the word. They will all tell each other, and you will get a lot of love from that direction.”
Davis, who is also a novelist and musician, learned that the Moda location had become available again and decided he didn’t want to go it alone this time. He thought Graf’s bagels would be the perfect partner to his coffee, and reached out.
Davis believes there’s a reason that Graf has stayed in business for so long: He puts out a superior product.
The recipe for Graf’s bagels can actually be found in the New York Times, accompanying the 2012 article where Nathan described them as having a “chewy bite and an almost pretzel-like crust.” (Nathan, by the way, was in the Bay Area at the end of April on tour promoting her new book, “My Life in Recipes,” which sounds wonderful.)
Graf said he has changed the recipe very little over the years: Why mess with an excellent product? He uses a cold-fermentation process on his bagel dough that takes four days.
Some more unusual flavor profiles and toppings at Bageltopia include a Calabrian chile cream cheese in both dairy and vegan versions. This month’s seasonal product is a fennel salt bagel — a must-try, if you can get there this month, that features fresh fennel fronds mixed into the dough and is then dusted with powdered fennel. But my new favorite combo is the sushinova, which pairs a tamari-wasabi cream cheese with the house-made lox, topped with cucumber, nori strips and tobiko (with pickled ginger on the side). It was the Japanese-inspired bagel I didn’t know I was missing.
I also really appreciated the vegan “tuna” salad made from jackfruit. While it didn’t taste quite like tuna, it was delicious enough that I didn’t feel I was missing anything. Bageltopia uses Violife vegan cream cheese right now, but the trio is experimenting with making its own.
So far, hot egg, vegan egg and tofu bagel sandwiches are on the menu. If Bageltopia adds meat to the menu, it will be restricted to fowl.
While I tried plenty while I was there, someone needs to report back to me about the French toast bagel, which is a fried cinnamon-raisin bagel, served with ricotta cream, maple syrup and powdered sugar. It’s definitely not something you’d find in a traditional bagel shop, but neither is the sushinova. And that was delicious.
The bagels cost $2.50 each, or $27 for a dozen. The open-face sandwiches are considerably more, starting at $8.50 and going up to $17.50 for the sushinova.
“There’s something comforting about bagels,” Davis said. “It can be an affordable luxury as well as a throwback to some people’s childhoods.”