Aussie bagel boy discovers flour power in New York bagelfest

When Michael Shafran, the Brooklyn-born man behind Sydney’s iconic Brooklyn Boy Bagels enterprise first heard about BagelFest in New York, he was determined to take part. Shafran had perfected his bagels in Australia, built a business from scratch and earned a reputation as the guy who could bring New York to Sydney’s Inner West.

Naturally, a trip back home to showcase his skills and compete against 48 bagel vendors felt like a no-brainer; Shafran was a competitive speed skater in a past life after all. But what started as a simple plan to test his bagels against the best in the world quickly became an odyssey full of mishaps, headaches, and dough-induced ancestral reflection.

“There’s a Yiddish curse,” Shafran explains, eyes twinkling. “May you be reincarnated as a bagel maker in the afterlife.” It sounds quaint at first — until you picture the original bagel-makers, sweating in New York City basements so hot they resembled furnaces, kneading dough with their toes.