‘I still have dough under my fingernails,’ Virginia bagel shop owner says

That describes my initial feeling after relocating to the southeastern Virginia coast in July from years living in the U.S. Midwest—namely, St. Louis.

If you want biscuits, this is the place. Ditto, pimento cheese and something called Brunswick stew. It involves chicken but evidently at one time used squirrel meat.

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My quest was simple. I just wanted a good bagel, so I posed the question to the Jewish Virginia Beach Facebook page. Two shops got consistently high marks, so I visited both. The good news: Both were fantastic.

Baker’s Crust Bagels is just a few miles west of the beachfront, and it bakes legitimate New York bagels. As in, they are par-baked in New York City at Ess-a-Bagel, then driven 360 miles south. Two years ago, owner John Stein struck a deal with Ess-a-Bagel to give Virginia Beach residents the real deal.

“John really believed in this idea of presenting real award-winning New York Ess-a-Bagels,” said Adam Cohen, its marketing director. “There is something really powerful and special about that. We receive the partially baked bagel that will then be freshly finished throughout the day. So you are getting a real, right-out-of-the-oven New York bagel that is hot and fresh.”

I tried a Baker’s Crust everything bagel, and sure enough, it had the chew and crunchy crust of a New York one. The only thing missing was taxi cabs honking and irritable Manhattanites waiting on line.

Cohen acknowledged that some New York transplants to Southern Virginia have offered a critique of sorts, saying, “Y’all are not nearly rude enough.”

The Yelp reviews for Yorgo’s Bageldashery generate hundreds of five-star ratings, with comments like: “Soooo good!” “Delish!” and “It’s a classic!” On social media, the Jewish Virginia Beach group included the confirmation: “Yorgo’s is hands down the best bagel I’ve ever had.”

That was all I needed to know. I headed to Norfolk and sat down with owner Greg Peterman, who shared his personal bagel journey. A native of Southern California, Peterman got his first job at age 15 working at a bagel shop in Chesapeake, Va. He learned the business, but it was a grind, and so he focused on studies, earning a degree in political science with a minor in international studies.

Peterman and many other Norfolk residents were regulars, and in 2006, he bought the shop. Other than physical enhancements to the building, he didn’t tinker too much with the bagel formula. After all, why mess with success?

I sampled a Yorgo’s kosher-certified everything bagel with scallion cream cheese, lox, paper-thin red onions and capers. It was sublime. Other customers seemed to have the same reaction.

“Some 40% of our customers probably come in four days a week, and that’s pretty crazy,” Peterman said. “We bake between 800 and 1,200 bagels a day. We usually sometimes go through all that on one of the High Holidays or the weekend. I think our record is probably 2,600 sold in one day.”

I watched him greet one customer after another entering the shop. It was late morning, and Peterman was still cheerful after spending a full day in the kitchen. He showed up for work a little after 3 a.m.

“Since I’m an owner-operator, I actually baked all the bagels this morning,” he said. “I still have the dough under my fingernails right now,” showing them off.

“We’ve been here 20 years, and that’s what has really made it worth coming to work every day,” he said. “I like the community. They’re supportive and they care about us. Our employees love coming to work because they’re part of the community we created.”

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