Black Seed Bagels

Honey water before the fire

Dough rests before it meets honey water; Dianna Daoheung, chef at Black Seed Bagels in New York City, keeps that sequence central in NoMad. At the Broadway counter, the bagel is not treated as a nostalgic object. It is a daily bread program with rules: hand-rolled dough, a boil sweetened with honey, and a wood-fired bake that gives the crust its snap. Daoheung is co-founder, executive chef and head baker for Black Seed, a role she has held since 2014, after training at University of Central Florida and French Culinary Institute, working the line at Mile End, cooking pastry at Boulevard in San Francisco, returning to New York as bread program assistant at Mile End, and later serving as sous chef at Isa.

Noah Bernamoff, chef and founder at Black Seed Bagels, brings a different discipline to the same counter. He trained at McGill University and Brooklyn Law School before building Mile End Delicatessen and then Black Seed in 2014. His part of the work is the edited format: a shop where front of house, back of house, pace, and product all have to read cleanly, even when the daytime line is moving fast.

A bagel measured by rest and heat

The method at Black Seed sits between Montreal and New York traditions, with the hand taking the first responsibility. Dough is portioned into four-ounce balls, rested in oil for 20 minutes, then cold-fermented for approximately 14 hours to build flavor before shaping. The ropes run about a foot long; the baker pinches and snaps them into rings, using wide-hand rolling to keep the surface even and the dough from tearing.

The boil lasts two minutes in honey water, a simmer rather than a hard rolling boil. That stage sets the spring of the crumb before the bagels move to the wood-fired oven, where heat near 425°F takes them through a bake of about 20 minutes. The result is a compact bagel with chew, sweetness held in check, and a crust that can carry smoked fish, egg, almond butter, or the sharper pressure of a BLT without collapsing into softness.

The counter around the oven

The NoMad room works at counter-service tempo, but the bench still sets the tone. The oven is part of the atmosphere, not a decorative relic; brick, fire, trays, and the smell of browning dough do more than any sign could. Coffee and tea move beside the bagels, while sandwiches make the case for the dough as a platform rather than a side note.

The menu keeps its center of gravity close to the oven. Wood-fired bagels carry the Salmon Classic, the AB&J, the BEC egg sandwich, and the Black Seed BLT. In a neighborhood built for quick decisions, Daoheung and Bernamoff have kept the slower gestures visible: the roll, the boil, the bake, the handoff across the counter. A wood-fired bagel is cooling at Black Seed Bagels in NoMad.