Business & Tech
Summit Bagel Opens on Morris Avenue
Local resident launches a unique bagel shop despite the difficult economic climate.
Phillip Alarashi’s got guts. In June, the Summit resident opened Summit Bagel on Morris Avenue in the midst of a recession that’s currently affecting small businesses throughout the state.
“I thought about how bad the economy is, but I have a lot of confidence,” he said while rolling his homemade dough in the back of the store. “I’m not afraid of anything.”
Alarashi is confident that customers will flock to Summit Bagel because of his tried-and-true methods of making the classic breakfast food. First, he makes the dough with a secret recipe including hi-gluten flour, which is high in protein while low in fat and calories. Then he hand rolls the dough, something that he thinks sets his bagels apart from the bigger franchises.
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“The hand rolling is the secret of a quality bagel. It gives you the taste and the look for the bagels. You can’t repeat it with a machine or frozen dough,” he said.
Alarashi also uses a little-known technique to bake the bagels. He cooks each one in 100-degree water for 15 seconds before baking them, making the bagels much softer to the touch and moist to the bite.
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Summit Bagel is the third location that Alarashi has opened since coming to New Jersey from Brooklyn in 1982. He opened a strictly kosher shop in Passaic in 1994, and another in Clark in 1999. Although it was “absolutely” more expensive to open a store in Summit, he said that the lack of bagel shops in the town and the support of the community made him go forward.
“I did the research and one of the biggest reasons I pushed to open in Summit is because of the support from the community,” he said. “They liked what I did in terms of bagels, service and quality.”
Summit Bagel is located on 529 Morris Ave., and is open 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, 5 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sundays. Besides an array of bagel choices, the shop also sells hot and cold sandwiches, wraps and pizza made with Alarashi’s homemade dough. As for that recipe, it remains a secret.
“That’s one secret I can’t tell,” he said.
