Oceanside store celebrates 30 years in business

About 1000 people came out to congratulate Tony Cavezza, owner of Oceanside’s Long Island Bagel Café on reaching 30 years in business. Cavezza and his Managing Partner Joe Anazalone manned a grill and treated customers and friends to a barbeque. In addition to the to the cookout the day featured face painters, raffles and characters in costume.

“It was our way of saying ‘Thank You’ to our community and our customers,” Cavezza said.

According too the Café’s website, “The name originated from beugal (old spelling of Bügel, meaning bail/bow or bale) is considered plausible by many, both from the similarities of the word and because traditional handmade bagels are not perfectly circular but rather slightly stirrup-shaped. This, however, may be due to the way the boiled bagels are pressed together on the baking sheet before baking. Also, variants of the word beugal are used in Yiddish and Austrian German to refer to a somewhat similar form of sweet filled pastry (Mohnbeugel (with poppy seeds) and Nussbeugel (with ground nuts)), or in southern German dialects (where beuge refers to a pile, e.g., holzbeuge, or woodpile). According to the Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, ‘bagel’ derives from the transliteration of the Yiddish ‘beygl’, which came from the Middle High German ‘böugel’ or ring, which itself came from ‘bouc’ (ring) in Old High German, similar to the Old English ‘bēag’ ‘(ring), and ‘būgan’ (to bend or bow).”

Since the original café opened in Oceanside the Long Island Bagel Café organization opened other stores in Bellmore, Long Beach, Glen Cove, Nesconset, Baldwin, East Northport, Stony Brook and Howard Beach.