If several weeks ago you noticed that Bushwick, of all places, seemed to have become just a shade more Ashkenazi—and, just maybe, French-Canadian—know that your mind is sound, that there was a good reason for that impression: just half a block from Maria Hernandez Park, a branch of the citywide bagel chain Black Seed opened its doors to the public. Known primarily for a flagship product that splices together the disparate—and often mutually antagonistic—baking styles of Montreal and New York, the enterprise is helmed by chef and partner Dianna Daoheung, who has been nominated twice for a James Beard “Best Baker” award thanks to her work directing what are now seven Black Seed shops scattered around Manhattan and Brooklyn.
As conventional wisdom would have it, few things are as quintessentially New York City as a warm, toasted bagel generously paddled with smooth, cold cream cheese. Except, here’s the thing: that bit of Jewish culinary patrimony is just as closely associated with Montreal. Six years ago, Black Seed descended on this tangled cultural/gastronomic briar patch with schmear-flecked machete in hand, ready to to slash a path towards reconciling two Balkanized varieties, hitherto thought to be irreconcilable.
As a concept, Black Seed started life in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, when Noah Bernamoff and Matt Kliegman, friends and seasoned restaurateurs, would commiserate over beers about, among other things, the demise met by Bernamoff’s Red Hook commissary kitchen at the hands of the 2012 natural disaster, and what they saw as the sorry state of the artisanal bagel industry in New York. The two men share a Jewish cultural identity, but Bernamoff is from Montreal, Kliegman from Long Island; therein, it seems safe to assume, lies the genesis of the chain’s splicing together New York and Montreal bagel genes to create a fresh hybrid, one that may be to bagel aficionados what the liger or tigon once were to zoologists, i.e., freakish and unholy. To those of us not in the habit of grinding that particular ax, however, the combination seems perfectly reasonable.
