Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min<\/p>\n
The cream cheese in Rabbi Yonah Gross\u2019 refrigerator seems to be lasting a lot longer over the last two months.<\/p>\n
There have been no bagels from New York Bagels.<\/p>\n
The kosher bagel bakery \u2014 which opened in 1964 on Haverford<\/a> Avenue near City Avenue in Overbrook<\/a> Park \u2014 has been closed since March 3, when it was heavily damaged in a gas explosion. <\/p>\n It will reopen at 8 a.m. Sunday.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve never missed Mother\u2019s Day in this shop,\u201d said owner Rayyan Kayyali. \u201cMothers are a blessing.\u201d<\/p>\n On Wednesday, as Kayyali and workers scrambled to finish renovations, he recounted his own blessings. \u201cI\u2019m here because of God,\u201d he said, pointing to the ceiling, where one panel was still askew.<\/p>\n The morning of the explosion, he had arrived early, about 5:30, because a synagogue had placed a large order of smoked fish for Purim. He needed to slice it. His baker was on his way to tend to the bagels.<\/p>\n But something was wrong. The oven was cold.<\/p>\n Every morning, Gross starts the oven before 5 on a timer that he has set, as part of his role as kashrus administrator for the Community Kashrus of Greater Philadelphia. As Kayyali is not Jewish \u2014 he\u2019s Muslim \u2014 Gross\u2019 act of starting the oven achieves a higher level of kosher known as pas Yisroel<\/a>, referring to bread that a Jewish person has had a role in preparing, Gross said.<\/p>\n Puzzled, Kayyali leaned down almost to the floor to press the reset button inside the oven, rather than do it through the wall switch. <\/p>\n When he hit the button, the igniter sparked.<\/p>\n \u201cEverything just exploded,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Kayyali, who learned later that gas had been flowing for nearly an hour, was shielded from most of the blast by the shelf in the front of the oven. His decision to duck is \u201cwhat really saved my life,\u201d Kayyali said.<\/p>\n He ended up on the floor, unconscious. At first, he thought he had been out for about 15 seconds. Security footage showed that it was almost five minutes.<\/p>\n He staggered outside into the 25-degree morning and collapsed in front of the store. \u201cWhen I woke up, it seemed like a dream,\u201d he said. \u201cI was looking around thinking, \u2018Why is the shop open?\u2019 There used to be glass here. Nothing seemed real.\u201d<\/p>\n The front windows were gone. Inside, the floor, walls, ceiling, lights, counter, and equipment had been destroyed.<\/p>\n Kayyali said he was treated at a hospital for a minor concussion. His hair, lashes, eyebrows, and parts of his hands were burned. He praised the police and fire departments, as well as Philadelphia Gas Works, for their quick response.<\/p>\n The timing was eerily coincidental. A construction company had been scheduled to visit that very day to discuss a small renovation Kayyali hoped could be done during Passover, when the bakery would be closed for a week. He had asked whether the entire shop could be redone, but was told that would take too long.<\/p>\n \u201cThe same day, the entire shop exploded,\u201d he said. \u201cNow we changed out everything.\u201d<\/p>\n The oven survived. Manufactured in 2005, it had been installed by the previous owner a few years ago, Kayyali said.<\/p>\n A service technician later told him that seeds may have blocked the igniter. \u201cHe told me a similar incident happened at another bakery a few months ago, but there is supposed to be a safety feature where, if the igniter doesn\u2019t spark, the gas shuts off,\u201d Kayyali said. \u201cThat didn\u2019t happen here.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNothing is making sense,\u201d Kayyali said the technician told him.<\/p>\n \u201cJust to be clear, we didn\u2019t rig the system or create something unusual,\u201d Gross said of the timer function. \u201cThis was part of the factory settings we were working with.\u201d<\/p>\n The bakery has since added safety features to the oven and plans additional protections for the bakery\u2019s kettle, which is also controlled by gas.<\/p>\n Kayyali bought the bakery in 2024<\/a> after his brother Fares, a Drexel University<\/a> student, had worked there for the previous longtime owner, Nick Sammoudi. When Sammoudi said he was ready to retire, Kayyali \u2014 a native Floridian then living in California and working for AAA \u2014 saw an opening.<\/p>\n \u201cI worked here for almost a year, learned everything, wrote everything down \u2014 all the recipes,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was his golden chance, and my golden chance.\u201d<\/p>\n The menu will remain largely the same, including the tuna salad, a specialty. Kayyali plans to bring back rye bread, eventually add bagel chips, and is working on coffee. Bagel prices will rise slightly, to $1.99, though dozens will remain $20 at reopening.<\/p>\n A brief history of bagels in Philadelphia<\/p>\n Kayyali acquired more than an oven, recipes, and a loyal kosher clientele. He inherited a 60-year bagel lineage that began with two New Yorkers convinced that Philadelphia needed the real thing.<\/p>\n Pennsylvania business records show that brothers Jack and Irv Tillman signed a lease in 1964 in the \u201cnew Haverford Avenue shopping center\u201d through Herbert Yentis Co., the Overbrook Park brokerage that still operates today.<\/p>\n That month, Inquirer reporter Henry Neiger dropped by 7555 Haverford Ave. to see what the fuss was about. He found the Tillmans \u2014 two New Yorkers who were fifth-generation bagel bakers.<\/p>\n Philadelphia was hardly bagel-barren in the mid-1960s. The city\u2019s thriving Jewish community supported dozens of bakeries that turned out mainly breads such as pumpernickel and rye. Big names such as Bogoslafsky\u2019s and Rosen\u2019s are long gone, but Kaplan\u2019s New Model, also kosher, is still around after 107 years.<\/p>\n But New Yorkers, then as now, were doctrinaire about their \u201cwater bagels\u201d: high-protein flour, malt, yeast, and salt, cold-fermented and boiled before baking. They had the shiny exterior and dense, chewy interior that most others lacked in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n The Tillmans saw an opening.<\/p>\n \u201cWe heard that water bagels were not available in Philadelphia and decided to do something about it,\u201d Irv Tillman told Neiger. \u201cWe feel sure that Philadelphians will become just as addicted to bagels as New Yorkers.\u201d<\/p>\n Then came the boast: \u201cIn New York, there are 250 bagel bakers. In Philadelphia, we are the only ones who bake real bagels.\u201d<\/p>\n The bagels seemed to pass the New Yorker test. Neiger\u2019s article quoted \u201ca young housewife\u201d who had wandered in hunting for an authentic water bagel.<\/p>\n \u201cDivine, absolutely divine,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel like I\u2019m back in New York City again.\u201d<\/p>\n Gross said it was not clear when New York Bagels came under rabbinical supervision, a selling point to many observant neighbors in Overbrook Park and Lower Merion<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThis might be the longest-running place we\u2019ve been with,\u201d Gross said of Keystone-K, which started in the early 2000s. Local rabbis from synagogues would certify bakeries in their areas.<\/p>\n The Tillmans were not in business for long. In June 1965, they sold the bakery to another New York bagel baker, Melvyn Leibowitz, who used the recipe developed by his Romanian great-grandfather. After Leibowitz\u2019s death in 1983, his wife, Doris, took it over. She sold it in 1988 to a group of investors.<\/p>\n Eventually, the bakery came into the hands of Sammoudi, who ran it for a quarter-century before selling it to Kayyali in 2024.<\/p>\n