Mindy’s Bakery

Bagels, bialys and a hot chocolate that won a national contest

Order the hot chocolate before anything else. It won Good Morning America’s United States of Hot Cocoa contest in 2026, and it is the item that draws people across the city rather than around the corner. The rest of the counter is bread and pastry: artisanal bagels, bialys, and a case that changes with what the kitchen is baking that morning. Bagels and bialys give the shop its Eastern European anchor, while the pastry side carries French, Italian and Middle Eastern threads. It is a compact retail programme rather than a long restaurant menu, and it is better for it.

Mindy Segal’s melting pot

Mindy’s Bakery describes itself through smell first: yeast, sugar, flour and coffee. That is a fair summary of the point of view. Mindy Segal, the award-winning pastry chef who owns it, frames the baking as a respectful melting pot, carrying forward techniques learned from other bakers, from grandmothers and from friends rather than inventing a house style from nothing. The result is not generic baked goods but inherited methods translated onto an American bakery counter, where a bialy and a laminated pastry can sit on the same tray without either looking out of place. Hot chocolate is not a new idea for her either: she spent years running a Chicago dessert bar built around the drink before this counter opened, which is why it is handled as seriously here as the bread.

Where to start

Take the hot chocolate, then build around it. A bagel or a bialy is the Eastern European half of the visit, and the bialy is the more interesting choice for anyone who has eaten a lot of bagels. From the pastry case, pick whatever shows the French, Italian or Middle Eastern side of the baking that day, since the case is where the rotation happens. Treat this as a bakery counter rather than a sit-down meal: the order works best as one drink, one bread and one pastry, taken away in a bag. Bagels are the safest thing to carry home for a group and will hold better than anything laminated. If the case has something with a Middle Eastern accent, take that over the more familiar pastry, because it is the part of the programme hardest to find in another Chicago bakery.