As is the case with most dishes that incite almost irrationally strong opinions, there’s no single answer to the question “What is a perfect bagel?” But if you ask Benjamin Simon, he’ll say that the ideal one exhibits a stark contrast of textures. The crust should produce a nice crackle when you bite into it, and the interior should be pillow-soft.
This is the underlying belief behind the bagels at Simon’s SoMa bakery Bagel Daddy, which opened in December. The menu includes five varieties of bagels — plain, everything, sesame, poppy, and salt — and nine flavors of house-made cream cheese, which range from the usual suspects like plain and scallion to the unexpected blackberry mint and garlic chile crisp. There are bacon, egg, and cheeses, and a classic open-face lox sandwich featuring sushi-grade smoked salmon, as well as coffee, cold brew, and tea.
Though he’s a software engineer (and the founder and CEO of yoga app Down Dog) by day, Simon has been obsessed with bagels since his childhood outside of Chicago. “Bagels were like, a third of my calories,” he says with a laugh. He got into the field the way several other Bay Area bagel-makers did: After moving to San Francisco more than a decade ago, he couldn’t find what he considered to be a good bagel. So he started making his own.
He’d been looking for a brick-and-mortar space for years before debuting Bagel Daddy as a pop-up at Burning Man in 2023. He baked 1,000 bagels at a commissary kitchen in the Bayview and brought them to the Playa, where they were an immediate hit. Simon admits that part of the draw might have been the branding, which leaned into the more provocative implications of the Bagel Daddy name (opens in new tab). (Sample signage: “Bagel daddy. Cum hungry. Taste our cream.”) Though the current logo stars a family-friendly cartoon bagel with a fluffy handlebar mustache who wears nothing but shoes and gloves, the Burning Man version showcased a rotund baked good in a full body harness, brandishing a whip.
Simon has been building out Bagel Daddy’s space for two years, transforming a former full-service Mediterranean restaurant into a counter-service shop and sizable bakery. Making bagels is a two-day process, he explains, that starts with mixing 250 pounds of dough in the giant standmixer, feeding it through a bagel former, and proofing the rings overnight. The next day, they’re boiled in 45 gallons of water spiked with barley malt syrup before being baked on burlap boards in a 500-degree deck oven. To achieve his ideal juxtaposition of textures, Simon’s recipe aims for a high hydration content in the dough. “We basically push it as far as we can,” he says.
Simon estimates that the bakery can produce between 4,000 and 5,000 bagels a day. Beyond selling to the residents and office workers in the area, he hopes Bagel Daddy will become known for office catering and wholesale offerings. The team is already using a blast chiller to freeze six-packs of bagels that can be brought home, alongside 8-ounce containers of house-made cream cheese.
Simon admits that nothing he’s doing is new — the city’s bagel scene has changed wildly, and for the better, since he started his journey. “San Francisco is no longer in the bagel drought that we were even five years ago,” he says, while noting that none of the Bay Area’s other bagel shops manage to produce his ideal product.
After spending most of his professional life working on digital products, he’s been challenged and delighted by his new vocation. Navigating permitting and construction, learning where to install sinks and drains, and exploring the wild world of kitchen ventilation have all been challenges for the first-time food business owner. “Unlike software, it’s pretty hard to iterate with restaurants,” he says, “unless you’re opening a second restaurant.”