Celebrity chef Ed Halmagyi speaks candidly about anti-semitism and the immediate closure of Avner’s

Celebrity chef and bakery owner Ed Halmagyi has spoken candidly about the anti-Semitic abuse he says he has endured for years, admitting he feels “utterly stupid” for believing it would never escalate into something more serious.

That abuse has led to the permanent closure of beloved bakery Avner’s. It included incidents of vandalism and personal threats.

The Melbourne-born cook, best known for Fast Ed’s Fast Food, Better Homes and Gardens and Discover Tasmania, spoke in the aftermath of the Bondi Beach massacre, which left 15 people dead and has reignited national conversations around hate crimes and community safety.

Halmagyi’s Surry Hills bakery, which opened in 2024, has been repeatedly targeted with graffiti, hate mail, vandalism and broken windows. He says the incidents occur almost daily.

“I feel so damn stupid,” Halmagyi told ABC Sydney radio host Chris Taylor.

“We have been five to six days a week subject to graffiti, vandalism, hate letters, busted windows – it goes on and on, for two years I’ve put up with this.”

Reflecting on the broader climate facing Australia’s Jewish community, he said the warning signs were always there.

“It was just building and I was so wrong.

“I feel utterly stupid.”

While Halmagyi said Avner’s sold 1000 doughnuts on Sunday alone on the day of the massacre, the realities of running a visibly Jewish business were front and centre that same day.

“The first thing I had to do was remove stickers from the outside of the business saying ‘Jews kill babies’ and ‘go back to where you came from’,” he told Taylor.

“Later in the day the police came by to give us an update on some existing threats to myself and to the business and how they’re progressing.

“Then … a guy drove past in his pickup with a couple of kids in the back seat … and spewed the most extraordinary bile at me and my staff in front of 40 or 50 customers who all witnessed it.

“Everyone goes ‘oh that’s awful’ and I’m like ‘no, that’s just Sunday’.”

Halmagyi has previously described opening a Jewish bakery as a lifelong dream, but within eight months Avner’s was targeted with anti-Semitic graffiti and a handwritten note reading

“Be Careful.” He says passers-by have hurled abuse and even animal faeces at the business, adding that this behaviour has become an accepted — and disturbing — norm.

Halmagyi announced on Wednesday that he was closing the bakery known for its chocolate babka and sesame bagels.

He has since received dozens of bouquets and notes expressing gratitude for his publicly Jewish food institution.

“I genuinely believe that the combination of our [business] being sufficiently high-profile and publicly Jewish [has led to us] being individually identified and targeted. Most Jews are not individually targeted because most of them get on with their lives very quietly,” Halmagyi told the Sydney Morning Herald.

“I made a decision to work publicly because I thought it was important to represent the very best that our community has to offer. But in doing so, I put myself into public conversations that aren’t healthy. I now have to deal with the fact that if somebody decides they want to go and get someone publicly, I am precisely that sort of person.”

Halmayagi is not alone in fighting the abuse, Sydney Jewish food business, Lox In A Box, owned by Candy Berger and Gaia Lovell, have been subject to one-star and antisemitic Google reviews since the Bondi massacre.

“Went to bed heartbroken and completely devastated,” Lox in a Box posted on Instagram. “This is what I woke to in my inbox … It’s so disheartening, where’s our collective humanity? Antisemitism is not a joke … posting negative antisemitic reviews can really harm a small business like ours.

“We have always been a super inclusive business; we have always tried our hardest to never exclude anyone, so reviews like this actually do hurt, personally.”

Google has removed the reviews.

Jonathan Jackson, 17^th December 2025