Bagel-mania is sweeping Sydney. The days of the plastic-sleeved, supermarket circles are numbered as proper boiled, baked, hand-shaped and loaded bagels pop up everywhere. Ed Halmagyi (AKA Fast Ed from Better Homes & Gardens) has plans to best them all through his labour of love, Avner’s Bagelry, opening next week in Surry Hills.

In a heritage-listed building with a six degree lean on Bourke Street, Halmagyi has been working away on a project that is close to his heart. As a Jewish chef eating his way through Sydney and Melbourne, what this man craves most is a proper New York-style deli. Specifically, one that focuses on producing really great bagels – a process that the chef feels cannot be done on a large scale.

Making enough bagels, by hand, to feed the hungry hordes of office workers is no short order. The key, according to Halmagyi, is small batches of hand-made bagels made over the course of the day, not only ensuring that every bagel purchased is fresh, but that it’s been made with the attention to detail that no machine can replicate.

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“The big thing for us is the emphasis on things being all handmade. So we’re making our own pastrami for bagels, we’re making our own lox. We’re making sauerkraut. We’re making our own pickles. We’re making our own cottage cheese. There’s a real celebration of what these traditions are.”

The pastrami in question will come from a custom-built smoker, a creation of one of Halmagyi’s friends, a boilermaker at HMAS Kuttabul. The smoker is the modified inner-skin of a WWII anti-torpedo bulkhead and will smoke up to 50 kilograms of meat at a time.

Conversation quickly turns to the philosophical, as Halmagyi references the Jewish custom of ‘tikkun olam’ or, to leave the world in a better state than you found it. For Halmagyi, the bakery is his version of just that.

A social enterprise as much as it is a place to buy bread, the chef is acutely aware of his surroundings in Surry Hills – a stone’s throw from two psychiatric centres, drug and alcohol rehabilitation centres, the Wesley Edward Eagar Centre, and in a suburb with a dense population of people experiencing homelessness.

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Halmagyi’s Turkish step-mum introduced to him the similar concept of ‘askida ekmek’, a tradition that dates back to the Ottoman empire of hanging bread outside for those who are doing it tough. A tradition that will carry over to Avner’s Bagelry.

“In Türkiye bread is very cheap but it’s also the mainstay, caloric part of a Turkish diet. What people do is they say, ‘Can I have three loaves but put one loaf of bread on the hook?’ And the bread is for anybody who can’t afford to buy their own. Because nobody in the world should have to go without food.”

Customers are also free to purchase loaves and bagels for the hook. Consider it your good deed for the day. Your bagel will taste that much better for it.

“No questions, no comments, no judgment. If someone needs bread and takes all five loaves, it’s ok. We can just put out more.”

Avner’s Bagelry will open on February 20 at 370 Bourke Street, Surry Hills. More details at avners.com.au.

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