Ess-a-Bagel Celebrates 50th Anniversary With New East Side Store

You want a schmear?

Attention all bagel lovers who pass through the vicinity of Midtown or Murray Hill: a new bagel palace has landed! It’s called Ess-a-Bagel—yes, that Ess-a-Bagel, the same one many already know and love from their four other Manhattan locations, plus one in Brooklyn and another at the Newark airport. Their newest outlet and now flagship store at 770 Third Avenue at East 47th Street is a veritable bagel shrine with 2,300-square-feet of de-lish! If the Shrine of the Báb sold bagels, it could hardly do better.

This new bastion of the bagel faith supplants another location at Third Avenue and East 51st Street. Straus News was recently invited to a pre-opening event celebrating both the company’s 50th anniversary and the new palace.

“50 Years! Can you believe it’s 50 years?!,” exclaimed Ess-A-Bagel CEO Melanie Frost at the event, celebrating the organization that’s been baking and serving bagels longer than when “Annie” first opened on Broadway.

With four retail bagelries, three other free-standing outlets and a state of the art bakery in Harlem, which processes wholesale products, Ess-a-Bagel is bigger than many folks realize. Bagelers as far away as South Korea are able to love their Ess-a-Bagels. To illustrate how amazing this is, consider an October 1936 Brooklyn Eagle headline: “Suspect Arraigned in Jewish Roll Theft”:

”[Jake] Abramovitz was arrested on complaint of Nathan Keller, [who] told the court that for the last two weeks a dozen bagels have been missing daily from his baked good. He explained that a bagel was a Jewish roll.”

While some of the Manhattan locations have changed over time, the bagels—the Jewish rolls!—have been consistent.

A Bagelry Grows Next to Stuy Town

The original store was opened at First Avenue and East 21st Street, across the street from Stuy Town, in 1976 by Gene and Florence Wilpon and her brother Aaron Wenzelberg. Coming from an Austrian baking family, their bagels are large, hand-rolled, kettle-boiled, Austrian-style ones. The Wilpons used the Yiddish word ess, which means “to eat” to name the brand (eat a bagel). Melanie Frost, a niece of Florence Wilpon, has been the Chief Executive Officer for 13 years, overseeing the Ess-a-Bagel empire.

Food choices at the brick and mortar locations are myriad and ample; bagels, appetizing, salads, different cream cheeses, meats, cakes, pastries, rugelach, muffins, and cookies. A variety of cold and hot beverages are also available.

While some of the Manhattan locations have changed over time, the products offered have been consistent.

At the preview event, most of the foods were available, along with a DJ keeping the crowd in a jovial, festive mood. In keeping with the anniversary, two giant bagels were placed on a table. When Ms. Frost was finished with her combined anniversary and grand opening peroration noting the dual events to celebrate, there was no ribbon cutting.

There was, however, a sharp knife to cut the oversized bagels, which were sliced into, a little cream cheese added to the bagel piece, and bing bong! The historic cutting was a veritable oyfn brikhl (good luck in Yiddish) and Happy New Schmear! all in one.

The new Third Avenue retail space is shaped like a U— not to be confused with Fox’s U-Bet chocolate syrup— and has food counters at one end, with the other end offering natural daylight facing East 47th Street. The back wall of the new location is a bagel business Hall of Fame filled with clippings of the awards the company has won, complemented by 50 years worth of photographs of the Ess-a-Bagel staff members and stores.

If you want to Ess-a-Bagel with a schmear, or perhaps a glistening layer of nova lox in other Manhattan locations, you can do so at 108 West 32nd Street in Midtown, 115 Broadway downtown, 324 First Avenue, and 2030 Broadway on the Upper West Side (pick up only).

Visiting Brooklyn, once renowned as the City of Churches? You will find one inside the Time Out Market in Brooklyn Bridge Park.

Catching a flight out of Newark Airport’s Terminal A? Chomping an Ess-a-Bagel during your flight and that coach seat to Aberdeen or Zanzibar might not seem so bad. Happy Anniversary to a bagel-rific New York City institution!