Blazing Star Café brings homemade bagels, bialy, and babka to West Ashley
by Lorne Chambers | Editor
Baker and restauranteur Bettina Fisher says certain foods have the power to evoke strong memories and nostalgia in people. One bite of something can send us back to another place and another time.
“It’s the smell and taste and the memory, says Fisher, who just last month opened Blazing Star Café, located at 874 Orleans Road in the space formerly occupied by Blue Fin Sushi Bar. For her, it’s the bagels, bialy, and babka she remembers from her youth growing up around the Pittsburgh and Cleveland areas as well as her early professional career in the kitchens and bakeries of New York City that bring back those strong emotions and memories.
The road to owning her own restaurant wasn’t a direct one for Fisher. Rather than going to culinary school, Fisher studied design. And that’s how she found herself in some of the Big Apple’s hottest restaurants, working as a “food stylist,” staging dishes for magazine shoots and other marketing needs. But after 9/11 she gravitated from the soft lights of the staged dining room and into the bright fluorescents of the kitchen. For several years Fisher worked as a caterer and kitchen manager in New York’s pressure cooker of a culinary scene. The episode in Hulu’s The Bear when hundreds of to-go orders are printing out one-after-the-other and the kitchen is struggling to keep up is particularly poignant for Fisher.
“Finally, I just had enough of New York and moved down here about 10 years ago,” she says. Brought up in a Jewish home, Fisher still longed for the homemade bagels she remembered from her time living in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, however. So, she took a bagel and babka class with master pastry chef Melissa Weller, who has been called “The Bagel Whisperer.” Weller is a legend in the New York culinary scene and Fisher learned the art and science of making the perfect bagel. Fisher also staged (pronounced “staahj-ed”) for some of New York’s top bagel places to get a feel for what it took to run her own café.
While Fisher always dreamed of owning her own place, it took several years of grinding away in area food stalls, pop-ups, and commissary kitchens before she was able to make that dream a reality. After working on the marketing and promotions side of things locally for Mellow Mushroom, it wasn’t long before found herself back in the kitchen working at the now shuttered The Workshop downtown, which was founded by Butcher & Bee owner Michael Shemtov, who was also the previous co-owner of Mellow Mushroom while Fisher was there.
The Workshop, located in the Pacific Box & Crate building on Morrison Drive, served as a restaurant incubator and helped launch several popular local eateries, including Slice Pizza Co. on Savannah Highway, downtown’s Pink Bellies, Rebel Taqueria in North Charleston, and Little Miss Ha and Malika Pakistani Chai Canteen (formerly Ma’am Saab), which are both located in Mt. Pleasant. The Workshop was also the original home of Juan Luis, which was the test kitchen of the space’s current tenant, Rancho Lewis, which was opened recently by famed Texas pitmaster John Lewis of Lewis BBQ acclaim.
While at the Workshop, Fisher initially worked with Julius’ Delicatessen chef and owner Jacob Schor, now chef de cuisine at 39 Rue de Jean. During the height of the pandemic, she recalls working with Schor and fellow Workshop tenant Nikko Cagalanan, chef and owner of Mansueta’s Filipino Food, while they prepared food for healthcare workers and homeless shelters. Eventually, Fisher got her own tiny food stall at The Workshop. She called it Blazing Star Café and on the weekends served coffee and baked goods. When The Workshop finally closed in May of 2021, Fisher had to find another homebase while she continued working towards opening her own place.
“While at The Workshop, someone told me about Community Supported Grocery and so I started making bagels for them,” says Fisher who started working out of a commissary kitchen on Sam Rittenberg.
Community Supported Grocery is a West Ashley-based grassroots local food delivery service located on Wappoo Road. Fisher also started hosting Sunday pop-ups at Charles Towne Fermentory in Avondale, serving bagels and Waffles and other brunch-y items at the West Ashley Brewery.
Eventually, Fisher found the perfect location in West Ashley for her café concept. Initially, she says she wanted to open a traditional Jewish Delicatessen because despite Charleston’s sizeable Jewish community, there wasn’t any in the area. The closest thing is Charleston Bakery & Deli, which ironically isn’t even in Charleston. It’s in Summerville. However, Fisher says she quickly realized what an enormous undertaking a full-on deli would be and scaled it back to quaint café that serves traditional Jewish fare, like fresh-made bagels, served with various cream cheese flavors or stacked with smoked salmon, whitefish, or tuna salad. Fisher calls Blazing Star’s offerings “Jewish soul food.” There is no meat on the menu, so it is vegetarian, vegan, and pescatarian-friendly.
Fisher hired accomplished local baker Lexie Mangum to take over the kitchen duties. After she graduated from Johnson & Wales, Mangum, like Fisher, spent her fair share of time working in busy New York restaurants before returning to her hometown of Charleston. Along with making the bagels, Mangum also creates delicious babka, pound cake, muffins, and cookies every day that Blazing Star is open, which for now is Wednesday through Sunday.
“I gave her [Mangum] the recipes and she took them and ran with them,” says Fisher.
On Fridays, customers can get fresh-baked challah, made in house. On Saturdays and Sundays Blazing Star Café serves up fresh bialys, which are a special type of roll with a depressed middle that is filled with jammy onions and poppy seeds. Fisher says they have been a big hit on the weekends, especially among New Yorkers who are just finding out about the place.
“The reception has been so warm and welcoming so far. People seem really excited about it,” says Fisher, who plans to add more items to the menu like Piroshki, a Ukrainian hand pie. Fisher says she intends to donate a proceed of all sales of the Piroshki to a Ukrainian relief fund.
Blazing Star Café is located at 874 Orleans Road. For more information, call (843) 303-4416 or visit www.blazingstarcafe.com.
