Long, rewarding days on West Neck Road : Baker, businessman Darryn Weinstein and The Eccentric Bagel

Most days at 3:15 a.m., Darryn Weinstein is one of the very few — only? — Islanders on the way to work. “I’m either one kind of bird or another,” Mr. Weinstein said.  “Either a night owl or an early bird. Take your pick.” 

But driving to work is a pleasure, not a burden. “It’s a really special time of day,” he said. “Sometimes the sky is just filled with thousands and thousands of stars.”

At The Eccentric Bagel, the bakery and retail business on West Neck Road he’s owned and operated with his wife Amy for a little more than two years, he likes being alone in the shop in the wee hours, “enjoying the quiet time,” as he gets the place ready for another day.

His first duty is turning on the oven, which takes about an hour to heat up to a proper baking temperature. He’s named the oven “Guinevere.”

“We’ve got a kind of Camelot thing going on,” he said, noting the oven is manufactured by a company named Excalibur, and the flour used is King Arthur. “The mixer we’ve named Merlin. It’s where all the magic happens.”

The next chore is taking the bagels, made the day before, out of the refrigerator to warm up before being introduced to Guinevere. It will take a while before they fully warm up. Depending on the season, there can be between 400 to 1,600 bagels to bake, the latter number on a summer weekend.

While the bagels are warming, Mr. Weinstein makes seasonings for the baked goods and prepares oils. In an hour or so, Bennet Karnis, long a cook at the Heights Pharmacy Soda Fountain, arrives and the two men begin the first baking. “Bennet is such an asset to the business,” Mr. Weinstein said. “I rely every day on his experience and expertise.”

At about 6:30, the first batch of bagels are ready to remove from Guinevere and placed in racks. The other employees are soon at the shop. The Eccentric Bagel took over the space from the Eagle Deli, and employees there, Estella Zelidon, Suzy Escobar and Maria Perez, were invited to stay on at the new venture.

Pastries, rolls, and muffins are placed for customers and the coffee‚ including iced coffee these days, is ready for the 7 a.m. opening. But being Shelter Island, if you show up early, you’re not turned away.

“We have some regulars who come every morning before the official opening,” Mr. Weinstein said.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

“Eccentric” can refer to some of the fare available at the shop. You can, of course, get the classic New York bagels — plain, sesame, poppy, and everything —  but you can also choose from a “za’atar” a concoction made with olive oil and sesame seeds, or a jalapeño-cheddar, or a “bagel dog,” which is a Hebrew National hot dog in dough, or maple cinnamon crunch, or kalamata olive, or chocolate chip, or …

The Eccentric Bagel also has sandwiches, breakfast wraps, salads and sweets.

But the shop’s name also comes from a moniker pinned on Mr. Weinstein by Trish Anzalone, the former waitress at The Islander where the Weinsteins frequently had breakfast.

“When we first got a house on the Island in 2015, I was really taken by the relaxed, really chill atmosphere,” Mr. Weinstein said. “I’d leave the house in socks, sweats, and nothing matched. One morning, our friend Trish said, ‘You know, people are calling you The Eccentric Millionaire.’ I said, ‘What? Come on. I’m not a millionaire. But eccentric, yes, that I can see.’ So, when we thought about the shop, Amy named it.”

NECESSITY IS THE MOTHER OF …

One thing missing from their lives on Shelter Island when they first moved here, they felt, was a good bagel. Growing up on the Lower East Side of New York, Mr. Weinstein said, he had a bagel or a bialy every morning.

The Lower East Side is where the doughnut-shaped rolls of yeast, flour, water and salt, boiled before baked, were first introduced to America, according to the writer Jason Turbow. He noted that, “The first bagels baked in the United States in the late 1800s, by Eastern European immigrants, weighed about two ounces, or one-third the size of the modern fare. Given their lack of preservatives, they lasted only a few hours in the open air before hardening beyond edible proportions. Those bagels were baked mostly in tenement basements in the Lower East Side, which is where furnaces could be found and converted to ovens.”

In Brooklyn, and then living elsewhere in the metropolitan area, Mr. Weinstein never had a problem finding freshly baked bagels. That is, until Shelter Island. “Amy really got tired of me whining about it,” he said.

A veteran of the travel industry, his business began to dry up when COVID arrived. With both Weinsteins working at home — Amy is founder/CEO of Smash Entertainment —  “I walked into her office one day and said, ‘I’m going to make bagels,’” he remembered. She said, ‘Make bagels? You don’t know how to make dinner reservations.’”

But she was all in. Mr. Weinstein then studied with a New Jersey-based “bagel consultant” (yes, there are such people, he said) and in April 2022, The Eccentric Bagel opened. “We didn’t know what to expect,” he said. “But after we opened, someone said, ‘Whoa! There’s a line all the way down West Neck Road.’”

They were launched, with a sharp interior design and one of the coolest business websites you’ll find.

HOME SWEET ECCENTRIC

Closing time is 3 p.m., but Mr. Weinstein is far from finished. He makes bagels until 5 or later, and refrigerates them so they’ll be ready to be accepted by Guinevere the following morning. Then it’s home, with bedtime around 8 p.m.

Mr. Weinstein is one of the lucky ones. “After we opened, I’ve never felt I’ve worked a day,” he said. “With our place, with the music we play, the videos, the people I work with, the food we’re preparing, I get such satisfaction. And the way Shelter Island welcomed us, all the things the people of this community have given us, we thank them every day.”

He recalled managing an ice cream shop when he was in college. “I was so struck by the fact that everyone who left the store was smiling,” he said. “It’s the same here. You know — you’re not happy? Feeling down? Here’s a chocolate chip cookie, here’s a delicious bagel.”

The Eccentric Bagel: 25 West Neck Road. Closed Monday. Open Tuesday-Friday, 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday-Sunday, 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., 631-749-5363 — [email protected]