Unassuming Cronulla cafe sells show-stopping, hand-shaped bagels by the bay

Sandwiches don’t usually excite me, but I’ll drive to Cronulla for a hand-shaped, boiled and baked bagel at Hendrix. Owner-baker Todd Rosenfeld has spent many years perfecting his recipe, elevating a dish of durability and convenience into culinary art.

Take the salmon bagel: a hand-shaped ring of fluffy, long-fermented dough, jacketed in white paper and cut precisely down the middle. Pull it apart, and the cross-section is lush with layers of pink pickled onions, tomatoes, slices of cured wild-caught Alaskan salmon and a thick schmear of Neufchatel cream cheese with fried capers.

In many ways, this could fall into the category of sandwich. What is a sandwich, after all, if not things between bread? Does a bagel count as bread? What about a bun? Is a burger a sandwich? Does it matter? I don’t know.

What I do know is that a bagel is more exciting than sliced bread – especially in Sydney, where specialty sandwich shops have hit critical mass (I did a quick census of sandwich shops on Google Maps and stopped counting at 100).

Former New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells famously decried the bagel sandwich following a GQ article which argued bagels were too chewy and too unwieldy to compete with bread. But Rosenfeld isn’t chasing tradition. The recipe he developed over the past seven years dodges those potential pitfalls to create a bagel belonging to Cronulla – purposely softer, with a loftier rise and the subtle tang of slow-risen dough.

“We wanted to create a bagel that had the size of a New York bagel and the flavour profile of a sourdough bagel, but with more consistency and height,” Rosenfeld says.

“It’s certainly something that took a long time to figure out how to do properly, even with the seeds we use, it was a matter of getting the ratio and the weight right.”

Each bagel takes two days of stretching, folding and resting the dough. On the final day, Rosenfeld boils the bagels in honeyed water, dusts them in a carefully chosen selection of black, white, poppy and caraway seeds, then bakes them until golden.

It’s a level of care you might not expect from such an unassuming cafe. It’s a small, simple spot with a shady street-front terrace, a short walk from Cronulla Station and Gunnamatta Bay Baths. There’s a handful of tables, all of them outdoors, and it’s the kind of place where regulars rock up on fat-tyred e-bikes or wander in after a walk with their dogs (treats available by the counter).

Order at the window, which opens directly into the kitchen. You’ll probably see Rosenfeld in there, assembling the bagel sandwiches. He puts as much care into the nine available fillings as he does the dough: he makes the blueberry lemon preserve, spread like a jammy jewel-toned art atop cream cheese; steams a silky egg custard to put in the morning bagel with bacon, American cheese and spring onion; and the chicken schnitzel bagel is nothing short of formidable.

The crumbed chicken is huge, extending far beyond the bounds of the bagel’s golden crust, and paired with lettuce, American cheese, cowboy butter and pepper mayo. Have it with a side of fermented chilli.

The cafe serves other things, too. Toasties, Reuben Hills coffee, strawberry matcha. They’re good, but it’s the bagels that make Hendrix your next weekend go-to, when you need to fuel up before hitting the beach.

Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.