In a national bagel competition held in New York last weekend, a North Texas bagel shop came out on top — again.
Starship Bagel beat out 23 bagel shops for the Best Bagel award at the 2025 BagelFest. It also took first place for Best Showmanship, and was runner up for Best Schmear and for Most Creative.
Customers lining up to be served at Starship Bagel in downtown Dallas on Friday, Jan. 20, 2023.
Lola Gomez / Staff Photographer
“This was our best year by far all the way around,” said owner Oren Salomon, who competed in BagelFest the past three years.
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In 2023, Starship entered the competition for the first time and won first place for Best Bagel — an award for which only plain bagels are entered. Last year, it came in second in that category but won Best Schmear. It was the only Texas bagel shop to participate in the invite-only competition the last three years.
“Going from first to second is a humbling experience,” Salomon said, “so we knew we had to up our game.”
He and his team took a gamble this year by trialing a new par-baking technique he learned two months ago at a baking convention. The technique involves baking bagels in a deck oven until nearly done, blast freezing them and then finishing them off in a convection oven just before serving.
To pull this off for BagelFest, the Starship team flew to New York with bagels packed in dry ice. Salomon purchased a convection oven to set up at Citi Field where the competition was held so they could bake the bagels fresh before they were presented to the judges for the blind tasting.
“It was a huge risk and it could have easily not worked, but I knew what we entered last year was only good for second place and that we had to do better.” Salomon said. “In a way, we kind of debuted this new approach to baking bagels and the judges validated it.”
The successful par-baking method means Salomon, who is admittedly hyper-fixated on freshness, can transport his bagels further without compromising on quality.
“We now have a much more scalable, moveable product than we had before,” he said.
Salomon said he and his team have been warmly received by New Yorkers, despite beating them at their own game on their home turf.
“There’s this whole myth of New York water,” he said, “but now it’s Lewisville water.”