At 14, Tony Daddabbo took a position as a pot-sink dishwasher at a neighborhood restaurant in his hometown of Auburn, NY, a job that lasted only one night but would be the first piece of a lifelong puzzle. His work in hospitality would eventually take him all over the globe, as an integral part of the Tao Group, the wildly successful restaurant and nightclub hospitality venture. Now in his 50s, Daddabbo walked away from his coveted position to return to his hometown and open Auburn Bagel Company.
A first-generation Italian-American, Daddabbo's family laid down roots in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. His dad was born in West Virginia, by way of Bari, Italy, and his mom was from Cinisi, Sicily. “If you’ve been to the Palermo Airport in Sicily, you’ve been to my mom’s hometown,” he says.
At 15, a year after his failed one-night job, Daddabbo began working at Gino & Joe’s Pizzeria in the Fingerlakes Mall. “This time I stayed a while,” he says.
He worked food industry jobs while earning a music and engineering degree from Berklee College of Music in Boston, but hospitality had a stronger hold on him. He had a stint at the famed Carmine’s on Broadway and 91st Street in Manhattan, which led to an apprenticeship at Columbia Bagels, a legendary bagel shop that closed in the early aughts after 20 years.
Unbeknownst to him, the time spent working at Columbia Bagels would, two decades later, be the mise en place for his own business recipe. In 2002, Daddabbo took a position at the original Tao on 58th St. “I thought I would only be there for six months, as I was in the process of writing a business plan to open a Cuban restaurant that was going to be named Havana BC (before Castro). Havana BC didn’t last but the job at Tao did — for 20 years.”
Despite his success with the restaurant group, which afforded him the opportunity to work creatively at something he was a natural at, team training and development, he had long wished to own and operate his own business. “I was in my 50s and realized that I could only sustain one last at bat. If I was going to swing for the fences, I was going to finally do it for myself.”
Daddabbo soon realized that no restaurant or nightclub in New York City could be of equal allure to Auburn, the place he calls home. “I’ve traveled the world and have been privileged to see some of the most spectacular places, but none of it fills my heart as much as this patch of the world does,” he says.
Armed with self-doubt but ready to shape his own path, he took a leap of faith and retired from his position with Tao, and what had been “a wonderful experience,” he says.
At first, he contemplated recreating Daddabbo’s Pizza, his family’s namesake business, which no longer exists, but the venture wouldn’t add anything new to the community—now home to many excellent pizzerias. As he scanned the pages of his resume for the right concept, he came across Columbia Bagels, a job from 26 years prior, and he thought, “That’s it! Auburn doesn’t have a bagel shop!"
Replacing his suits and ties for an apron, Daddabbo perfected his bagel-making skills and set out to find the right home for his shop. A daunting task, as none of the locations called to him, until the universe gave him a gift: the building that his family’s pizza business had occupied came up for sale. “The location chose me,” he says. “I knew that this is where Auburn Bagel Company needed to go.”
Scaling the perfect bagel shop ingredients didn’t come without a weight of challenges, from mistakes in planning to running out of capital, Daddabbo’s bagel journey was salty, but in late spring, Auburn Bagel Company opened to a neighborhood hungry for authentic NYC bagels. “It’s probably easier to find the lost ark here in central New York that it is to find barley malt syrup,” he says, referring to an ingredient he considers essential in creating an authentic NYC bagel. He says that barley malt syrup adds depth of flavor to the dough, complementing the crispy crust and chewy interior.
Daddabbo meticulously sources all the ingredients for his made-from-scratch bagels and schmears, as in his Farmer’s Market Summer Herbs Cream Cheese Spread, which quickly became a favorite. Besides the classics, salads, and some baked goods, the menu is also peppered with Italian ingredients, an ode to the Daddabbo family's original home. Among them, Caprese Sandwich and Pizza Bagel, made with Lioni Latticini’s fresh mozzarella, an all-natural, hand-wrapped mozzarella with over 100 years of tradition that originated in Lioni, Italy, before finding a home in Brooklyn.
Despite his new grueling schedule and the responsibilities of being his own boss, Daddabbo gets to write his life exactly as he envisions it in his corner of Auburn, an aspect of this new chapter that he finds very rewarding. For the past 20-plus years, he says, a line from T.S. Elliot Poem called, “The Little Gidding” became a beacon for him to travel by: We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
