New York Old School Bagel & Deli is on a roll
July 26, 2024
New York Old School Bagel & Deli serves up a taste of Gotham in south Charlotte.
by Michael J. Solender | photographs by Justin Driscoll
Mark Stordeur’s journey to overnight success as a bagel baker was years — and miles — in the making.
Not long after Stordeur, 60, opened New York Old School Bagel & Deli in Carmel Village late last year, lines were out the door and extending well onto the sidewalk fronting the south Charlotte shopping center.
His popular breakfast, lunch and takeout spot puts out hundreds of bagels daily, delighting northern transplants and Southerners alike. Menu offerings include classic deli fare like chop cheese, pizza bagels, reubens and meatball Parmesan sandwiches. At breakfast, there are pork rolls, pastrami and eggs, hot Cappy ham, French toast bagels, and bagels and lox, plus more than half a dozen cream cheese-based “schmears.”
And while it may stand to reason that Stordeur’s Long Island, New York, upbringing would inform him on all things bagel, it’s his years of globetrotting entrepreneurial endeavors and an insatiable thirst for discovery that are baked into every bagel and sandwich he serves.
“From my first job delivering newspapers at 12 years old, I had a vision of running my own business,” Stordeur says. “My dad has a friend who had dairy cattle in upstate New York, and I saw myself owning a dairy farm. I began saving my money right then.”
It wasn’t a dairy farm Stordeur ended up with, however. It was an Angus beef cattle ranch in Kentucky, where he worked for years into his 50s. That dream was fulfilled after extended stays in Nigeria and Ghana while he ran a business exporting tropical hardwoods to American furniture-makers. Before that, he worked in the hospitality business, waiting tables in a fine-dining Italian restaurant and earning back-of-the-house chops in a New York bagel café.
It’s an unusual background, though upon meeting Stordeur, one can’t help being taken by his business acumen, people skills and joie de vivre. He chose Charlotte on a whim, leaning on advice from his brother and previous visits to North Carolina selling to High Point furniture-makers. He arrived in 2021 and opened the bagel shop in December 2023.
“I heard the city was developing, and I wanted a challenge,” Stordeur says. The steady influx of New York and northern transplants was another draw. Much of what is offered (bagel-wise in Charlotte) is through chains — I wanted to deliver something authentic. The moment you put ‘New York’ on the door, there is an expectation, and I don’t want to disappoint anybody.”
Stordeur has clearly found a niche that has struck the taste buds of many not-from-heres. “I had people come from the other side of Huntersville recently. One guy grew up in Levittown on Long Island. He walks in, and I’m making my own potato salad, coleslaw and macaroni salad the way they do on Long Island. It evokes a memory. It tastes exactly like you remember it tasting. The smell, the taste of my bagels — they are a time machine and take people back. That’s why I do what I do.”
His early success has not been lost on the local business community. A local independent retailer reached out to him about wholesale baking, and he’s been approached about expanding into other parts of Charlotte. He’s mulling each offer and is cautious about growing too fast. There might even be New York-style pizza in his future, something he wanted to make certain was baked into his lease. For now, he’s simply working hard on his initial concept.
For those curious about the secret behind what makes Stordeur’s bagels so authentically New York, here’s a spoiler — it’s not the water. “We do mimic the alkaline content in the water found in New York City for our dough,” Stordeur says. High-gluten flour, malt, yeast and salt are the only other bagel ingredients, other than the toppings. “But it’s the attention to the proofing temperature, the kettle boiling prior to baking, and lots of love and hard work that makes the difference.”
That’s where the “old school” comes into the process, according to Stordeur. “Anything that’s good is worth working for,” he says. “That’s part of the old-school creed.” SP
New York Old School Bagel & Deli is located at 7510 Pineville Matthews Rd. Suite 11A.
