Hannah Banaszak
Tilly Bagel Shop | Chicago
SEPTEMBER 2024
Before there was Tilly Bagel Shop, there were Sunday mornings in Titusville, Florida, where a young Hannah Banaszak eagerly waited for her dad to return home with fresh bagels every week. As an adult, she enrolled in culinary school at Valencia College, focusing on baking and pastry. After working at the Hyatt Grand Cypress in Orlando for a year, Banaszak felt ready to transition to fine dining and relocated to Chicago. She began working as pastry sous at Rising Stars alum Stephanie Izard’s Girl & the Goat for the next few years before eventually working at a number of the group’s other restaurants. Banaszak then moved to Marisol where, under the guidance of Pastry Chef Alison Cates, she put her first item, a bagel, onto the brunch menu. A year later, she accepted a position at Boka, learning the ins and outs of high-volume cooking.
When the pandemic hit, Banaszak started taking bagel orders through her Instagram. With demand growing rapidly, and having broken not one but two ovens in her apartment, she decided to move her operation and began working out of Eta’s Commercial Kitchen Rental. Over the next two years, Banaszak sold her bagels and cream cheese via online orders, at farmers markets, and through pop-ups until she felt ready to open a bakery of her own. In 2023, Tilly Bagel Shop was officially born. At her brick-and-mortar in the South Loop, she offers composed sandwiches in addition to her classic bagels, like her Chicago bagel with smoked salmon, sun dried tomato cream cheese, red onion, and capers. Banaszak is always finding ways to engage with her community—from a rotating bagel of the week flavor to a March Madness bagel bracket—and has her sights set on opening a second Tilly Bagel Shop location in the near future.
