AUBURN — Tony Daddabbo has worked in the food industry for more than 30 years. His most hated job was making bagels. Now, Daddabbo wakes up at 3 almost every morning of the week for a date with dough at his new shop, Auburn Bagel Co.
Daddabbo needs the early start to satisfy the local appetite for his authentic New York City-style bagels. The shop opened at dawn April 16 to a ravenous line outside the door, and by the end of the week supplies were running so low and staff was running so ragged that he had to close for a day so everyone could catch up — him most of all. "We got ransacked.
But in a good way," he told The Citizen earlier this month in the shop's modest dining area. "We were out of bagels. If we were to remain open that next day, I literally would have not gone home.
I would have been making bagels until midnight, and I have to be back here at 4 a.m." Auburn Bagel Co.
owner Tony Daddabbo prepares fresh cinnamon raisin bagels for baking. As many bagels as he has to make, Daddabbo appreciates the job in a way he didn't 25 years ago. The Auburn native was in his 20s, fresh out of the Berklee College of Music and ready to become a rock producer.
As an employee of Columbia Bagels on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, however, the only thing rolling in his life was dough. The renowned shop remains the only job Daddabbo ever dreaded. Over the next two decades, he would go on to open dozens of restaurants around the world with Tao Group Hospitality.
But he held on to .
