About
About Us
Bowery Bagels
Bowery Bagels was founded by a transplanted New Yorker whose goal is to replicate the high quality bagels he grew up enjoying. A genuine NY style bagel should have a light crunch on the crust, a chewy but not dense interior, and a malty richness.
To obtain these characteristics, each bagel we make is hand rolled. The dough is fermented to develop flavor and texture. After a long, slow proof, the bagels are boiled in small batches, then baked to perfection and delivered within hours.
The ingredients in our bagels are deliciously simple. Flours from grains grown and milled in the Pacific Northwest, Bob’s Red Mill flours and grains, malt, yeast, salt, and water. The occasional high quality spice or natural flavoring. That’s it. Every Bowery bagel is vegan and certified Kosher Parve by Oregon Kosher.
Bowery Bagels are baked by a small team of dedicated professionals and bagel fanatics in North Portland. We hope you enjoy eating them as much as we do making them.
About Michael Madigan
Owner, KitchenCru, CruMarket, and Bowery Bagels
An entrepreneur and accomplished businessman, Michael Madigan is the brains behind KitchenCru and the owner at Bowery Bagels. A New York City native, Michael moved to Portland, Oregon in 1987 during a career in computer technology. With a love of food and wine and a passion for knowledge, Michael’s vast array of interests led him to become an accomplished home cook, cheese maker, butcher, winemaker, brewer and baker. After 25+ years in computer tech, and ready to start something new, Michael realized he was happiest when around food and wine. This led him to open Portland’s KitchenCru in March 2011.
A born and bred New Yorker, Michael grew up as the second eldest of five children living first in Brooklyn and then in Queens. His relationship with food goes back to the beginning, with his fondest childhood memories centered on large Sunday dinners and holidays with his Italian-American family. Opening the cans of tomatoes for the tomato sauce while his mother and grandfather made the meat and pasta, his grandmother baking up fresh desserts, his family sitting around a large dinner table filled with pastas, meats, and wine—all were part of a typical Sunday. He also recalls his grandfather bringing home fresh octopus and eel he had caught, and teaching him how to clean fish. It was hardly the diet of a typical child, but Michael loved every bite.
Upon meeting Michael, it is hardly a surprise he is at the head of so many business endeavors. Passionate and hardworking, he brought with him to Portland an enthusiasm for food and cooking, but he still couldn’t get a solid, New York-style bagel. A family staple growing up, he ate one from the German bakery his family frequented every Sunday after church. In 2012, he decided that enough was enough, and after a few weekends of a very well received bagel popup, he opened Bowery Bagels, named after a subway station he passed through every day in high school. Chosen as the best bagel in Portland by a Willamette Week panel of rabbis, the bagels at Bowery definitely live up to their name as true New York-style bagels.
Michael and his wife, Lynn, live just south of Portland in West Linn, Oregon. Despite his many culinary endeavors, his favorite food is and always will be pasta. When he’s not at one of his many businesses, he is thinking up new ones to start, cooking at home, reading non-fiction, and going to the house he built himself on the Washington Coast.