My alarm went off absurdly early this morning — at 3 a.m., to be exact. By the time I arrived at Beauty’s Bagel Shop in Temescal, Oakland, the kitchen’s wood-fire oven was roaring, making the 2,400-square-foot restaurant feel cozy, with just three of us in the room. Already, a set of bagels was toasting under the fire.
It could have been due to my early-morning daze, but I watched, mesmerized, as bagels moved from their boiling station to the wooden planks where Beauty’s Bagel Shop co-owner Blake Joffe seeded them near the fire. Despite all the movement, it was quiet.
After an hour, dozens of bagels — sesame, everything, and salt and pepper — sat piled together, ready for Blake’s inspection. They were perfectly golden in color and topped with thick seeds that shone against the backdrop of the fire’s radiating heat. With their dense and hearty texture, the bagels stand alone as a meal with their sweet and smoky flavors, but they complement any of the menu items, from the smoked-trout salad sandwich to the fried-chicken sandwich to the shakshuka. Serving restaurant-quality entrees that accompany their signature bagels, Beauty’s Bagel Shop is more than just a bagel shop. “We have a unique thing going,” says Blake.
The Bay Area is not an easy place for restaurants to survive in, even celebrated ones (remember former Beauty’s competitor and “best” bagel shop Schmendrick’s?). Blame labor shortages, rising food costs, or fickle consumers, but it’s never been easy to open or keep a restaurant open here.
Because a restaurant’s life can be fleeting, it’s important to appreciate our favorites — our go-to, pick-me-up places that feel like home. There’s beauty in comforting food and beauty in good food cooked slow but served fast. That’s the kind of food that’s served at Beauty’s.
It took Blake 18 months before he would let anyone else work the oven. “It was just me every day,” he says, recalling the restaurant’s early days a decade ago. Now he has another employee by the flame on his “off mornings,” but he has a hard time finding people who are interested in keeping up with the grueling schedule.
“The hours are not good,” Blake admits, recapping his intense schedule. On Thursdays, he starts baking at around midnight and won’t stop until they close. On Sundays, he’s usually up at around 2:30 a.m. and bakes until noon. “There are a lot of details you need to remember—it’s not for most people.”
On non-baking days, Blake gets up at around 7 a.m. On his way into one of his restaurants — last year, Blake and his partner, Amy Remsen, opened a second location on Franklin Street in downtown Oakland — you might catch him hitting up one of Oakland farmer’s markets in search of fruits for seasonal jams or produce for soups and salads.
As with everything that Blake and Amy do — from coffee to catering — the couple are rarely not talking about work. Though their days are super-busy, they don’t plan to hand over the reins anytime soon. “Our main issue is not having enough support and time to do the things we want to do,” Blake says. The pipe dream had been to someday open an Italian restaurant, “like spaghetti and meatballs, but done properly; not, like, spaghetti with sauce on top,” Blake says. Now that that plan has been scrapped, they’re focused on expanding the catering business while continuing to serve hot, delicious grub to longtime customers.
Bagels, as any New Yorker can attest, are a way of life. But when Blake and Amy moved from Philadelphia to Oakland a decade ago, people laughed when they asked, “Where can I get a good bagel around here?”
So the two restaurant vets set out to give the Bay Area a signature bagel. Always eager to open their own restaurant, the two had toyed with the idea of opening a breakfast spot but wanted something simpler. “Bagels were a big part of my childhood growing up Jewish,” Blake told me. “Every Sunday was family time eating bagels.”
They discovered that Oakland lacked any restaurants serving Montreal-style bagels, a type of bagel Blake had grown up eating when visiting the city where his father was raised. Blake started to learn how to work with dough at Pizzeria Delfina. It didn’t take long before he and Amy were using the pizza ovens at Addie’s Pizza Pie in Berkeley (now closed), where Amy worked to supply Wise Sons Deli (from their pop-up days and even after they opened the Deli on 24th Street in San Francisco) and Saul’s Restaurant & Delicatessen in Berkeley with Montreal-style bagels.
Although Beauty’s bagels are baked in a very similar way to how they’re baked in Montreal, Beauty’s difference is in the New York City–inspired dough. Montreal-style dough doesn’t contain salt, but as Blake says laughingly, “We do because it’s delicious.” So while the team boils the bagels in honey water, seeds them, and bakes them in a wood-fire oven like they do in Montreal, the team mixes and shapes the dough, then lets it retard overnight to add more flavor and structure.
That means Beauty’s bagels have a golden exterior that audibly crunches when you bite into them, but the insides remain soft and doughy. The smokiness from the fire rolls on the tongue with each bite, but there’s a sweetness too.
I left the restaurant at 5 a.m. holding a bag of my fresh-out-of-the-oven bagels with an idea in my head. It was still so early that the glowing fire remained one of the only sources of light in the neighborhood. It will be hours before Blake is done baking, but in just two hours, when the Temescal location opens at 7 a.m., hordes of guests will line up for breakfast.
Sure, Beauty’s bagel is inspired by Montreal using dough favored by New Yorkers, but in Oakland, it’s something unique. After my view from behind the oven, I’ve decided that their bagel should be dubbed “Oakland style”: a little humble, a lot of elbow grease, and fresh ingredients featured in a simple yet refined way.
