“It feels great to be in front of an oven making pizza again,” says Bobby Hellen, the chef and pizzaiolo behind Black Seed Pizza, which opened in New York City’s East Village earlier this month.
New Yorkers are glad to have Bobby Hellen back too. He closed down his pizza-centric restaurant GG’s, also in the East Village, in 2017, leaving a grandma pie-shaped hole in the city’s food scene.
Hellen headed north to the Hudson Valley, where he’s overseeing the culinary options at smartly curated Otto’s Market in Germantown. One of the partners in Otto’s is Noah Bernamoff, who owns a variety of New York food ventures including Black Seed Bagels, now a chain whose second location is sharing its home with Hellen’s pizza joint. The wood-fired oven turns out bagels during the day and Hellen’s Sicilian-style pan pizzas at night, seven days a week.
“The process of pizza and dough making was my life for a while,” Hellen tells La Cucina Italiana. “After GG’s closed that was just gone. At the moment, I didn’t realize I would miss it.”
The Green Pie from Black Seed Pizza. Credit: Shay Harrington
Hellen’s love of the dough-making process shines through in Black Seed’s pies, which puff up and achieve a perfect structure thanks in part to a 36-hour ferment and a 100-year-old sourdough starter. He tops the pizza with a sauce made from organic Bianco DiNapoli San Marzano-style tomatoes from California and blends of cheeses such as mozzarella, pecorino, and grana padano, along with select toppings.
The opening menu features a cheese pie, a tomato pie, a white pie, and two specialty options: a green pie with marinated kale, pesto, fresh mozzarella, and more; and Bob’s Pie, a sumptuous, spicy, sometimes crunchy mix of ingredients including soppressata, red onion, castelvetrano olive, banana pepper, and homemade chimichurri.
Why Sicilian-style pan pizza? Hellen says that the goal was to make the pizza “as inclusive as possible. Not only are we doing two pie sizes at different price points but we also have dairy-free, vegan, and gluten-free options.”
Pepperoni pie from Black Seed Pizza. Credit: Shay Harrington
He also likes the pan preparation for splitting the pizza, whether round or square. “The pro with serving two shapes is that the Sicilian style of pizza doesn't change. The only difference is that you can get a middle piece on the 12" square, which is sliced into six pieces, and every piece on the 9" round is the same, sliced into even quarters.”
The pan also gives the cheese-based pizzas a crunchy crust reminiscent of trendy Detroit pizza, though the Black Seed dough, a slightly denser textural cousin to focaccia, is the pizza’s main characteristic. Hellen is clearly passionate about pizza, which comes through in the flavors, the feel, and the presentation of Black Seed’s pies.
On that last point, Hellen alludes to the fact that the pizza’s attractive shape—practically framing the pizza for share-worthy social media shots—is helping launch the brand during a pandemic when he can’t physically serve and interact with his pizza-loving audience as he usually would.
“I really missed making food for people in a restaurant-style setting,” Hellen says. “Of course it's totally different with a purely pickup and delivery model, but I get some of that instant gratification that cooking and serving good food gives you. Thanks, social media!”