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It begins with a bagel. Pulled fresh from the oven and tossed into one of the large wire baskets propped up behind paned glass, adorned with a label. Sésamo. Amopola. Sal. Each one of the New York classics is made the star of the show as the line of people stretching out the door of Palermo’s Sheikob’s Bagels eagerly await their turn. With a rhythm matched only by the soft tunes of American classic rock emanating from the speakers overhead, a hand reaches in to grab the customer’s choice, slices it in half, and in one quick motion smooths a perfect layer of cream cheese over its surface. Next come the smoked salmon, onions, capers. All stacked up and given one final slice through the middle. Placed on a silver platter. Name called.
From the ease with which he crafts and perfects each sandwich, it’s hard to tell that the man behind the counter, Jacob Eichenbaum-Pikser, 28, had never once made a bagel before moving to Buenos Aires from New York’s Upper West Side. Now, five years later, his shop on the corner of Uriarte and José Antonia Cabrera specializes in providing Argentines with their first bagel experiences.
“The thing that’s important to me is that it’s authentic,” Jacob, pronounced by porteños as shay-kob or Sheikob, says. “So, if a person is having their first bagel, it be a good bagel, it be a real bagel, and have fillings that are what you would really eat on a bagel.”
This authenticity has struck a chord within the community. If it weren’t for the Spanish bouncing off the shop’s walls thanks to the predominantly Argentine crowd, Sheikob’s Bagels would easily pass for a bagel joint in Brooklyn. The last three weekends, they’ve sold out of the 24 dozen bagels they bake fresh every day for the first time since the shop opened a year and a half ago. Their staple is the ‘Clasico’, a traditional Manhattan-style lox bagel that masterfully balances the smoothness of cream cheese made in house by Jacob and the tang of smoked salmon.
“I used to avoid the fall apart bread circles that local places sold and binged on real bagels when I would go back to visit [the United States],” describes Alyssa Isidoridy, a fellow New York native and Sheikob’s Bagel regular. “Until recently I had just decided to settle with not having a good place to get bagels in Buenos Aires, but Sheikob's makes the real deal.”
Even the capers, which Jacob cites as his biggest expense as far as ingredients go, are imported from the United States to ensure authenticity. “The capers here just aren’t the same.”
Jacob’s desire for a taste of home was as much a part of his heritage as the bagels themselves. The bagel was brought to New York City in the late 1800s by Jewish immigrants craving the soft yet crunchy ringed bread of their Eastern European homeland, and by 1900 there were already 70 bagel bakeries in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Despite the near 200,000 Jews that live in the Buenos Aires the New York staple had yet to arrive in Argentina when Jacob made his move in 2013. Initially devised as a cure for homesickness, Jacob began making bagels in the kitchen of his apartment, using recipes he found on the internet in hopes of bringing a piece of home to the edge of the earth.
“I always liked cooking, but baking is a different thing, and bread baking is a totally different thing,” he laughed. “At first they really sucked.”
It wasn’t until he met a local bread maker that he was able to make a break into his legitimacy. There he learned about the fundamentals of breadmaking, including how to successfully use a sourdough starter.
“As soon as I started using pre-ferments and handling the dough in the ways he was explaining you had to handle it, they immediately got way better,” Jacob reflects.
Thus began a process of sampling various mixtures, finally settling on a combination of poolish, a wetter starter that allows the signature crust to form around the bagel, and sourdough for flavor. Once he got it right, he started making them for his roommates and friends, eager to share a part of his culture with them. However, bagel production didn’t expand beyond the four walls of his Parque Patricios apartment until his friend Facundo Rodriguez-Pereyra came to him with a proposition. Facundo had partnered with various coffeeshops around Palermo over the years, selling Sicilian-inspired pastries out of a cart every Saturday.
“He told me [one of the local coffeeshops] wanted to order 5 dozen bagels from me each week,” says Jacob. “At that point I had only made 5 dozen bagels in my life. Period.”
A weekly order soon turned into a cart of his own, which he would borrow from Facundo and attach to his bike every Sunday. One shop soon turned to two and suddenly Jacob was biking around Palermo five days a week making bagel sandwiches out of the cart at five different locations. Production moved to the kitchen of his roommate’s late-grandmother who had left behind a home in Palermo, where it stayed for the next three years. When the building owner decided it was time to tear the structure down and renovate, Jacob took it as a sign to set up a proper storefront.
“I think we had a lot more leeway to screw up a little bit at the beginning because people knew we were figuring it out,” Jacob explains. “We already really had a community of customers. And it was a community that I think because of the way the bike was set up, they were all kind of like family.”
Since this community is mainly composed of wealthy Palermo residents and tourists taking advantage of the new found worth in their dollar, Sheikob’s Bagels has remained above profitable since their opening. And while being the only bagel shop in the city puts him at an advantage as far as business goes, it comes at a personal cost.
“I would love for there to be another place that makes good bagels but there isn’t,” Jacob laughs. “I’ve just seen this food so much now that I don’t really want it that badly.”
Sheikob’s Bagels has also further tied Jacob to Buenos Aires, turning his cure for home sickness into the cause.
Though nothing about Argentina in particular is pushing him away, his friends and family are always pulling him back home. “In a way the shop was kind of an exit strategy,” he explains, expressing his desire to return to New York. “With the bike it was too dependent on my own will power. But by setting up a legitimate business, there are ways to extract myself and have it continue functioning.”