Toronto’s oldest bagel shop is turning 110 — here’s the story behind it
Toronto’s most iconic bagel shop just so happens to be its oldest, and it’s turning a whopping 110 years old in 2025.
The city is home to no shortage of legendary bagel shops, each of which has its own near-evangelical fanbase. Think Bagel House, Primrose, Bagels on Fire, Bagel World. If you eat the donut-shaped breakfast food, you’ve got a go-to in the city.
Only one local shop can claim the title of the oldest in the city, though, and, in Toronto, that goes to Gryfe’s.
Funnily enough, though, the bagel element of the business didn’t come into play until decades after the business was born.
Romanian immigrant Shlome Graif first landed in Hamilton, Ont., in 1910. By 1915, he was now going by Sam Gryfe, and he established the seed that would later grow into the Gryfe’s Bagels legacy, S. Gryfe Bakery.
The bagel business actually began “somewhat by accident,” current co-owner David Fisher told Dished Toronto.
After Sam’s tenure at the business concluded, his son, Arthur (Art), took over with his wife, Ruth, in 1956. Together, the pair moved the business to its first Toronto location in the heart of Kensington Market at 319 Augusta Ave., where TacoTaco now stands. Still, at this time, Art, who specialized in bread and pastry, had never made a bagel.
As the story goes, one day, a customer came in requesting bagels. Since the customer is always right, Ruth took the order, and Art got to work experimenting in the kitchen.
Gryfe’s bagels are made in a style unique to the bakery. (Hector Vasquez/blogTO)
“This experimentation eventually led to the creation of their distinctive bagel recipe that became famous throughout Toronto,” Fisher told Dished Toronto, although he concedes, “Of course, with legends, there are various versions of the origin story.”
What isn’t up for debate, though, is the fact that the bagels Art created were a distinct take on the baked good, entirely singular to Gryfe’s and, by extension, Toronto. If Montreal and New York can have their own styles of bagel, so too can Toronto.
At the very least, Gryfe’s can have its own.
The result of Art’s supposed late-night experimentation was a bagel that’s light and fluffy on the inside, encased in a crisp crust. It’s not quite as dense as a New York-style bagel or as sweet as a Montreal-style. It’s just Gryfe’s, and the bakery has been churning them out for nearly 70 years.
In Fisher’s opinion, it’s the fact that Gryfe’s bagels are truly one-of-a-kind that’s helped the shop stay alive for over a century, but, more than that, it’s the shop’s commitment to tradition.
Gryfe’s current location. (Hector Vasquez/blogTO)
The same recipe from the ’60s is still used at Gryfe’s today. While the shop has moved twice since Art and Ruth relocated to Toronto, once to perhaps the business’s best-known location at 3435 Bathurst St. and again, several years later, to its current home at 3421 Bathurst St., you can rest assured that the bagels you get at Gryfe’s in 2025 are the same ones your parents got in 1975.
Perhaps most impressive of all, the business remained a family-run operation for over a century, with ownership leaving the family only after Moishe Gryfe, Art’s son and the most recent in-family owner of Gryfe’s, passed away in 2021.
Come 2022, the Gryfe family sold the business to its current owners, Fisher and his co-owner David Granovsky, who, Fisher told Dished Toronto, were wholly “committed to preserving the traditional recipes and community spirit that have made it a Toronto institution.”
- You might also like:
- Your ultimate guide to Toronto's epic two-day pickle festival
- Shake Shack confirms that plans to expand to more Canadian cities are underway
- One of Toronto's best pho restaurants is opening a new location at a major intersection
Being in business for 11 decades and counting means that the bakery has certainly encountered its fair share of challenges; however, Fisher told Dished Toronto that it’s not the business’s ability to overcome obstacles that is its true measure of success.
Gryfe’s Bagels
Address: 3421 Bathurst St.
Phone: 416-783-1552
Still hungry? Discover Dished Toronto on TikTok