Image: Adelaide Farmers Market
Barossa and Adelaide’s favourite bagel stall, Motley Bagels, known for their fresh, homemade donut-like doughs are finally getting a place to call their own, with a permanent venue in Nuriootpa.
Owner Esther is no stranger to hospitality, having worked in the industry for around 30 years.
“My parents had a restaurant and sandwich shops in Sydney, which I grew up with for most of my childhood and teenage years,” Esther said.
When her own kids were born, she made the move to South Australia where she got a job working for a lady called Eleni who had a stall at the Barossa Farmers Market. When the opportunity came up for her own stall, Esther jumped on what she thought was a great opportunity.
“I started doing gluten-free products with my dad,” she said. “He was making cakes and biscuits, and I was doing breads and quiches and all that kind of stuff.”
This is where she started to dabble in the art of bagel baking, but when a local store was asking the community on where to source bagels, it became Esther’s permanent side hustle.
“I ended up running the farmers market, and bagels were my side hustle at the time.”
“Then COVID happened and the Barossa Market shut down.”
It was then Esther decided to apply for a role in the Adelaide Farmers Market, who had the space to do social distancing, which was a government regulation at the time.
“We thrived down there,” she said. “We were only going to do it fortnightly down at Adelaide, and it ended up becoming a weekly gig.”
So each week the Motley Bagel crew heads to the both the Barossa and Adelaide farmers market on Saturday and Sunday respectively.
“If you buy wholesale, you can buy as many bagels as you’d like to take home and do what you want,” she said. “You can also get toasted bagels at the market topped with cream cheeses and whatnot.”
From then Motley Bagels was thriving and when the Barossa Market reopened the team tackled both the markets again. Each weekend the team make as many bagels as possible and each time they continue to sell out.
“We supply numerous cafes with various different bagels and we do gluten-free as well as our sourdough standards.”
“It’s kicking goals, and now we’re too big to work from our current space,” Esther said.
Queue the Motley Bagel shopfront, currently under renovations on the Nurioopta main street, across from the local church.
The shop is not intended to fully replace the markets, at least not initially.
The offering will be much the same as the markets, and right now as Esther ‘gets her ducks in a row,’ she’ll still be giving the same great baked and fresh bagels out on the weekend market roster.
As you can imagine, the bagel and cream cheese offering is vast and each has their own uniqueness that has come from Esther crafty hands.
There’s the classics like cheese, sesame, plain, poppy seed, blueberry, salt and the most popular flavour of all, the everything bagel.
She also says the newer garlic and herb bagel called “Herb”, has become popular, especially with smashed avo on top but choosing an all time favourite would be a betrayal.
“It’s hard because I make them all, so they’re like my children. I don’t have a favourite.”
Esther changes the sweet cream cheese seasonally. In summer they do strawberry cream cheese, and this year she’s mentioned creating an apricot, choc honey and coconut cream cheese, using creamed chocolate honey from Kirsty at Kapunda Honey.
Other cream cheese flavours like Jalapeño and cheese, Sultana and cinnamon, Salted dark chocolate, Chargrilled capsicum also make a feature.
“Ultimately, I’d love to be able to open up and serve tubs of cream cheese to go with fresh hot bagels, that’s my goal,” Esther said.
Speaking of future goals, she also plans to hold bagel workshop for those wanting to hone the craft for themselves.
“Sometimes we’ll get some kids in during school holidays and teach them how to make rainbow bagels, and get some adults in as well.
“For those who want to know how to make gluten-free bagels and all those kinds of things, we’ll keep it really interactive for everyone.”
Esther is extremely grateful for the Barossa and Adelaide farmers markets, as well as her husband Davon, who helped have been there almost every step of the way.
The next your in one of the markets look for the glowing rainbow jester, which perches above their stall and is always smiling.
The name and logo both have a history that starts in the middle ages, where bagels were first made due to cooking restrictions on Jews.
“Jews were not allowed to bake bread, so they ended up boiling bread before they baked it,” Esther said.
“That’s how the base came about.”
Motley is actually the name for patchwork colour and because the team love their vibrant rainbow bagels, this is the inspiration.
The valley is in for a treat this July when the shop front officially opens with fresh, home boiled and baked bagels.
When: Expected mid July
Where: Nuriootpa
For more info and updates, click here.
