12 Days of Brooklyn – Brooklyn Artisan

Villabate Alba’s Famous Cannoli

December 11, 2012 by Basia Hellwig 1 Comment

Day Six • 12 Tastes of Brooklyn

Villabate Alba's pastry displays knock you over when you walk in the store. That's the cannoli, top left.

Villabate Alba’s pastry displays knock you over when you walk in the store. The cannoli are top left.

CANNOLI WERE TRADITIONALLY MADE IN SICILY for Carnevale, or Mardi Gras, a final luxurious burst of richness before Lent. But really, aren’t they perfect for any feast? I have to agree with Mediterranean cooking scholar Clifford A. Wright: “A freshly made cannoli is an extraordinary taste of celestial paradise, a perfect conclusion to a feast.”

Villabate Alba, a family-owned Sicilian pastry shop established three generations ago in Bensonhurst, is the place to experience that paradise—and other seasonal delicacies, too. As the Michelin Guide would say, “Worth a special journey” if you don’t happen to live in the neighborhood. (They also ship.) The cannoli have perfectly crisp shells and are filled with ricotta flown in from Palermo. Candied orange rind at one end and a cherry at the other perfect the package.

Marzipan fruits, good any time of year.

Villabate (named after the village in northern Sicily where the shop’s founders, Angelo Alaimo and his son Emanuele, used to bake bread) is bustling every time you go in. But at this time of year, lines form. You’ll find tables stacked high with panettone boxes and lots of special cookies and sweets traditionally made around Christmas.

Christmas cookie plates, ready to go.

They bake mostaccioli cookies, popular all over southern Italy—and Brooklyn—for the holidays. Apparently these used to be made with grape must (we’re talking back in days of the Roman Empire). They’re redolent of the spices of the Silk Road (think Italian gingerbread), filled with figs and topped with chocolate.

A pyramid of honey-soaked biscuit.

Rococò are crisp wreath-shaped cookies made with ginger and cloves, infused with almonds and studded with whole almonds. Honey balls stacked in a pyramid… The temptations are many. But be careful. You could go into a sugar coma just looking.

Villabate Alba Pasticceria & Bakery
7001 18th Avenue, Bensonhurst
718-331-8430

Photographs by Basia Hellwig. Date stamp typographic design by Joy Makon Design. The font is Goudy Oldstyle, by Frederick W. Goudy, Linotype, 1915.

Filed Under: 12 Days of Brooklyn, Food/Drink Tagged With: 12 Days of Brooklyn, 12 Sips and Tastes, 12 Tastes of Brooklyn, Bensonhurst, cannoli, Clifford A. Wright, Italian Christmas, mostaccioli cookies, rococò cookies, Sicilian pastries, Villabate Alba Pasticceria & Bakery

O Good Ale Comes

December 10, 2012 by Bruce Campbell Leave a Comment

Day Five • 12 Sips of Brooklyn

winter-ale-1785 TELL WHOEVER SOLD US THE CALENDAR (Pope Gregory XIII) that I demand a refund. It tells me winter is still 11 days away—beginning on the solstice. The truth is, December is full winter, the gloomiest part of year with its dark nights and fitful gray days. If we must break the year up into quarters, let’s admit we’ve been in winter for nearly six weeks. The solstice marks the low point of winter, the turning of the year, the slow return of the sun. No wonder my Highland ancestors lit their bonfires for Hogmanay: dispel the night, bring back the day. (Of course, from what I know of my ancestors, they probably also burned their neighbors’ barns and sheds for spite, but let that pass.)

To light up this darkest time of year, the craft brewers of Brooklyn are offering some nice and hearty ales, stouts and porters. Winter is the time of stouts and porters, dark and filling, not for your hefeweisens and pale lagers or (kill me now) light beers. For my taste, ale’s the thing for winter.

I’d hate for Robert Burns to be only remembered for Auld Lang Syne, the anthem of the new year, as he wrote other fine verse. The one that comes to mind here and speaks to the need for lightening the heart:

O gude ale comes and gude ale goes;
Gude ale gars me sell my hose,
Sell my hose, and pawn my shoon—
Gude ale keeps my heart aboon!*

Brouwerij Lane holds back the dark of winter with a wood-burning fireplace.

To keep our hearts aboon through winter, let’s find some Brooklyn beer. First up, the Brooklyn Brewery “There Will Be Black,” which I got to sample before a warm wood fire on a gray day at Brouwerij Lane on Greenpoint Avenue. The Lane is a lovely place to spend the winter. The 19 taps and several display cases of bottled beer should get you nicely through our shortest afternoons and longest nights.

“There Will Be Black” is a new release in the Brewmaster’s Reserve series which has, according to their publicity, “a core of black bread and dark chocolate, wrapped in a bright coat of orangey, minty hops”. If that doesn’t sound like a winter drink, nothing does. In addition to the “Black”, Brooklyn Brewery is shipping their standard range of seasonal beers in bottles, including Winter Ale and Black Chocolate Stout.

More elusive is the Sixpoint Brewery offering: Diesel. It seems to be rolling out as we go to press, and in just the last 24 hours, it has begun popping up around the city on the new Sixpoint beer finder. We’re heading out after writing this entry to hunt its “robust chocolate and roasted flavors, with thick pine hop flavor and aroma.”

Brouwerij Lane seems to keep at least one Brooklyn brew on tap.
Its website lists the current offerings; this week There Will Be Black is on the list.

I caught up with Kelly Taylor of KelSo Beer Company at Grand Central Terminal tonight where he was offering tastings of their signature Nut Brown Lager, which is as good as an ale in my book. He suggested the KelSo Winter Lager for cold nights and also said they were brewing a Porter. Check out their Facebook page or Twitter for more information on tastings and tap availability (they don’t have a web site). They will be commandeering a number of taps for a tasting at Bierkraft tomorrow, December 11.

It’s going to be a long winter. Be careful not to sell your warm socks.

Brooklyn Brewery
79 North 11th Street, Williamsburg
718-486-7422

Sixpoint Brewery
40 Van Dyke Street, Red Hook
917-696-0438

KelSo Beer Company of Brooklyn
529 Waverly Avenue, Clinton Hill
718-398-2731

Brouwerij Lane
78 Greenpoint Avenue, Greenpoint
347-529-6133

Bierkraft
191 Fifth Avenue, Park Slope
718-230-7600

*For those who find their Broad Scots rusty:

O good ale comes and good ale goes;
Good ale makes me sell my hose (socks),
Sell my hose, and pawn my shoes—
Good ale keeps my heart above (uplifted)!

Photographs by Basia Hellwig. Date stamp typographic design by Joy Makon Design. The font is Chalet Tokyo, by René Albert Chalet (a clothing designer), House Industries, 1970.

Filed Under: 12 Days of Brooklyn, Food/Drink, Uncategorized, Winery, brewery, distiller Tagged With: 12 Days of Brooklyn, 12 Sips and Tastes, 12 Sips of Brooklyn, Bierkraft, Brooklyn brewery, Brouwerij Lane, Chocolate Stout, craft beer, Diesel, Kelly Taylor, KelSo Beer Company of Brooklyn, Nut Brown Lager, Robert Burns, Sixpoint Brewery, stout, There Will Be Black, Winter Ale

Tipsy Quince and a Few of Her Saucy Friends

December 10, 2012 by Basia Hellwig Leave a Comment

Day Five • 12 Tastes of Brooklyn

Enough for everyone: Brooklyn Brine’s Hop-Pickle at Whole Foods

BROOKLYN HAS SO MANY SMALL-BATCH PICKLE MAKERS, you could write a book about them. Rick’s Picks, McClure’s Pickles, Brooklyn Brine, Sour Puss Pickles—so many to choose from, all with great taste combos and interesting stories behind their businesses. And then there are the sauces and relishes and condiments. Or how about a hot honey? I’ll keep sampling them all but for the holiday table, a girl’s gotta choose, so at least for now, here are my favorites for the feasts ahead.

Tipsy Quince and Cranberry Chutney, by Anarchy in a Jar
“The revolution starts in your mouth” is this small-batch producer’s motto, and her combination of two tart fruits with sweet whisky-soaked raisins in this chutney does just that. For the holiday, it’s perfect with poultry or game birds. Founder Laena McCarthy grew up making traditional jams with her family in the Hudson Valley and now makes 14 very flavorful chutneys and jams.

Look for them at Brooklyn Flea or at New Amsterdam Market, or buy online, or at local stores like Eastern District in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Cider Braised Onion spread, and Cranberry Pear Sauce, both by Saucy by Nature
Owners Przemek Adolf and Monika Luczak use locally sources ingredients to make spreads inspired by flavors they experienced during trips to faraway places. In the Cider Braised Onion spread, fennel and rosemary add a little bite to the sweet caramelized onions. Great with pork or poultry. The cranberry pear sauce is more tart than sweet, with a pinch of cardamom that adds complexity. Try it as a glaze for poultry or game birds, such as duck, suggests Saveur.com.

Buy online, at Dean & Deluca, and at small provisioners all around Brooklyn.

Brooklyn Brine’s factory and storefront in Gowanus.

Hop-Pickle, by Brooklyn Brine Co.
I first tried this hop-pickle when owner Shamus Jones was giving out tastes at Eataly (you know—the Outer Brooklyn place run by Mario Batali). The pickle is the result of a collaboration with Dogfish Head Craft Brewery in Delaware. As Dogfish founder Sam Calagione tells it, he was sitting around one day drinking a 60 Minute IPA and snacking on some Brooklyn Brine pickles. He loved the way they tasted together and called Shamus. The Hop-Pickle is made with Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA, caramelized onions and Cascade hops.

If you want to make pickles yourself, Brooklyn Brine holds classes on Saturday, noon to 3 pm, at their small Gowanus pickling factory. Sign up Wednesday by noon, for the Saturday class; brooklynbrine@gmail.com. Or you can buy their pickle-making kit at Whole Foods or Williams-Sonoma.

Look for Hop-Pickles at Whole Foods, small provisioners all around Brooklyn, or direct from the factory.

Brooklyn Brine, 574A President Street, Gowanus; 347-223-4345

Photographs by Basia Hellwig. Date stamp typographic design by Joy Makon Design. The font is Chalet Tokyo, by René Albert Chalet (a clothing designer), House Industries, 1970.

Filed Under: 12 Days of Brooklyn, Food/Drink Tagged With: 12 Days of Brooklyn, 12 Sips and Tastes, 12 Tastes of Brooklyn, Anarchy in a Jar, Brooklyn Brine, Cider Braised Onion, Cranberry Pear Sauce, Hop-Pickle, McClure's Pickles, Rick's Picks, Saucy by Nature, Sour Puss Pickles, Tipsy Quince and Cranberry Chutney

The Red Terroir

December 9, 2012 by Bruce Campbell 1 Comment

Day Four • 12 Sips of Brooklyn

The Brooklyn Oenology tasting room.

HERE IN CONCRETE-LANDSCAPED NEW YORK, we tend to think of wine as a product of elsewhere; foreign lands with exotic cultures and languages, like California or France. But in the past four years, two wineries have sprung up in Brooklyn alone: Red Hook Winery (established 2008) and Brooklyn Winery (2010), committed to actual production within the borough limits. Another approach is that taken by Brooklyn Oenology, which focuses on regional grapes and produces its wines outside the city. But it has set up a tasting room in Williamsburg to help promote its production.

Wine has a long history of being made in one place and consumed in another—remember all those ancient amphorae dredged up from the bottom of the Mediterranean? But local production has its merits. It is one of those tropes of the wine culture that to be in the know, one has to taste those wines that “never get shipped outside the little town in [insert name of region here] where they are made,” with the implication that the locals snare the best for themselves, leaving the rest of us to sip the leavings from the barrels. As well, in our increasingly environmentally aware culture, many question whether it is a good idea to be shipping quite so many goods, including wine bottles, thousands of miles, burning fossil fuels and polluting the planet.

When the French use the term terroir to refer to the effect of a geographical region on its agricultural products, they sometimes elevate that to a mythical level. But they are on to something. The number of steps in getting a wine from a little vineyard in Europe to our dinner table can appear daunting. Very different from the winemaker leaning over and drawing off a bottle for you from the barrel.

Cheese pairing at Brooklyn Oenology

A good place to begin to sample the local terroir is the Brooklyn Oenology tasting room. They have a nice selection of wines they are making from New York State grapes. They have three reds currently, with two 2006 vintages (unlike the other Brooklyn wineries, which haven’t been around long enough to actually have wines more than a couple of years old).

2006 Merlot: 93% Merlot with 5% Cabernet Sauvignon and 2% Petit Verdot (all grapes from Long Island’s North Fork).
2008 Motley Cru: 40% Petit Verdot, 37% Cabernet Sauvignon,18% Syrah, and 5% Merlot (all North Fork grapes, as well).
2006 Social Club Red: a blend of 62% Merlot, 26% Cabernet Franc, 8% Cabernet Sauvignon, 3% Malbec, 2% Petit Verdot, 1% Syrah. I would categorize this last as outside the terroir as 2/3 of the grapes are from the Finger Lakes region and hence had to cross bridges to get here.

The staff at the tasting room are helpful and friendly, there is a variety of regionally sourced cheeses and charcuterie on the menu, and the facility hosts a number of events including movie nights and a happy hour on weeknights before 7 pm that offers two glasses of wine for the price of one.

We’ve talked about Brooklyn Winery elsewhere, and they have a nice selection of reds, including the 2010 North Fork Blend (81% Merlot and 19% Cabernet Franc), which we’ll be saving for our Christmas table. The winery encourages you to bring your own growler so you can enjoy that “out-of-barrel” experience directly.

These Red Hook Winery bottles at the Brooklyn Wine Exchange survived Sandy. Collector’s items?

The Red Hook winery was badly damaged during Sandy and is currently offering “survival packs” of their wine in an effort to rebuild. Their wines are also available at the Brooklyn Wine Exchange on Court Street.

And some time soon, perhaps some wine connoisseur will lean over his dinner table to whisper of a wine bottle he snagged “that, you know, never even gets across the BQE.”

Postscript: Noticed on an old Brooklyn Historical Society blog post that December 7 th was the anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition. That reminded me that although we now welcome the new winemakers to Brooklyn, we are probably far from the high point of Brooklyn winemaking. Many immigrant families, particularly from Italy, were used to making wines. During Prohibition, thousands of personal winemaking operations went on in the borough, taking advantage of a loophole that allowed manufacture for personal or religious consumption. The grape consumption in the borough must have been truly spectacular through the 1920s and early 1930s.

Brooklyn Oenology
209 Wythe Avenue, Williamsburg
718-599-1259

Brooklyn Winery
213 North 8th Street, Williamsburg
347-763-1506

Red Hook Winery
175 – 204 Van Dyke Street, Red Hook
347-689-2432

Brooklyn Wine Exchange
138 Court Street, Cobble Hill
718-855-9463

Photographs by Basia Hellwig. Date stamp typographic design by Joy Makon Design. The font is Cochin, by Georges Peignot, Linotype, 1912.

Filed Under: 12 Days of Brooklyn, Food/Drink, Uncategorized, Winery, brewery, distiller Tagged With: 12 Days of Brooklyn, 12 Sips and Tastes, 12 Sips of Brooklyn, 2006 Merlot, 2006 Social Club Red, 2008 Motley Cru, 2010 North Fork Blend, Brooklyn Oenology, Brooklyn Wine Exchange, Brooklyn Winery, Prohibition, Red Hook Winery, red wine, terroir, wine, wine tasting

The New Artisan Butchers

December 9, 2012 by Basia Hellwig 4 Comments

Day Four • 12 Tastes of Brooklyn

Window at Fleisher’s Grass-fed and Organic Meats

IT’S BEEN A LONG TIME SINCE EVERY NEIGHBORHOOD in the city had its own butcher—someone who took a whole animal carcass (or even slaughtered the animal) and then dressed and cut it into sellable meat. By the early 1960s, meat was being packed and boxed in the Midwest, for handy delivery to supermarkets in plastic wrap. (See Robin Shulman’s Eat the City for more about the fascinating history of meat production in New York City.) Some butchers have hung on in the borough, of course—places like Staubitz Market in Carroll Gardens since 1917, and Paisanos Meat Market in Park Slope, established in 1960.

The meat counter at The Meat Hook, where you can see butchers dressing the meat just behind.

But in the last five years or so, new artisan butchers have been popping up all over it seems—Fleisher’s, originally in Kingston, NY, now in Park Slope, too; Marlow & Daughters, The Meat Hook. For these butchers, the artisan label is well earned: This is handcrafted meat, using time-honored skills that take a lot of practice to do well. They get grass-fed and pastured whole animals from small, local farms (even a New York City farm, in the case of pigs from Queens County Farm Museum) and are careful not to waste any part, from nose to tail. They are all active in training and apprenticing new butchers—and educating the public, whether in an extensive professional program or individual classes. Tom Mylan, of The Meat Hook (and before that, of Marlow & Daughters), apparently spent a year sleeping at the home of Jessica and Joshua Applestone, owners of Fleisher’s, in Kingston, as he apprenticed with Josh. At The Meat Hook, we met a young woman butcher apprentice who told us her grandfather had been a butcher.

One of two meat counters at Fleisher’s, in Park Slope

Handcrafted meat will cost 15 percent more a pound, but the customer gets something for that: meat from a sustainable source, advice on cuts that work best for different dishes—or how to cook more inexpensive cuts, and the exact cut you need, trimmed the way you want it.

If you know you’ll need a particular cut of meat for a particular day, do call ahead. Holiday orders, especially, will need to be made at least a week ahead, to be safe.

Fleisher’s Grass-fed and Organic Meats
192 Fifth Avenue, Park Slope
718-398-6666
Holiday order deadline: “as soon as possible, since things may go”
Special items: standing rib roast, rack of lamb, goose, duck, plus “all your other holiday favorites”

Marlow & Daughters
95 Broadway, Williamsburg
718-388-5700
Holiday order deadline: at least a week ahead; they may be able to do something with less notice, but no guarantee
Special items: local NY goose, pheasant, turkey (must be preordered); dry aged beef; house-made foie gras terrines

The Meat Hook
100 Frost Street, Williamsburg
718-349-5033
Holiday order deadline: Sunday, December 16
Special items: rib roast, rack of lamb, goose, guinea hen, capon, Muscovy duck, broad-breasted white turkeys, whole rabbit

Paisanos Meat Market
162 Smith Street, Cobble Hill
718-855-2641

Staubitz Market
222 Court Street, Carroll Gardens
718-624-0014

Photographs by Basia Hellwig. Date stamp typographic design by Joy Makon Design. The font is Cochin, by Georges Peignot, Linotype, 1912.

Filed Under: 12 Days of Brooklyn, Food/Drink, Uncategorized Tagged With: 12 Days of Brooklyn, 12 Sips and Tastes, 12 Tastes of Brooklyn, artisanal butchers, Brooklyn butchers, butcher apprenticeship, butchering classes, duck, Eat the City, Fleisher's Grass-fed and Organic Meats, goose, holiday meals, Jessica Applestone, Joshua Applestone, Marlow & Daughters, Paisanos Meat Market, Queens County Farm Museum, Robin Shulman, Staubitz Meat Market, sustainable meat, The Meat Hook, Tom Mylan, turkey

12 DAYS OF BROOKLYN: Families in the Winter Wonderland

December 9, 2012 by Anne Mollegen Smith 1 Comment

Day Four • 12 Views of Brooklyn

Painting by Ella Yang; see Who’s Who

BROOKLYN CHILDREN AND GROWNUPS are blessed to be able to play in beloved Prospect Park. The 585 acres include Brooklyn’s only lake, the lovely Lullwater. In 1861, after Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux had practiced up on Central Park on Manhattan, the great design team moved on to Brooklyn to start work on their masterpiece. There’s plenty of credit to go around, but some say the true father of the park was James S. T. Stanahan, city parks commission from 1860 to 1885, who championed its creation and expansion. (Stanahan also favored the merger into New York City, which some grumblers still say was the very, very worst possible thing to happen to Brooklyn – until the Dodgers left town, that is.) This snow scene, like yesterday’s, dates from the spectacular snowfall of 2009. The artist who captured it, Ella Yang, explains, “We finally had enough snow to transform Prospect Park into a winter playground. I was taking a somewhat slippery walk through the Park when I ran across this family heading home after an afternoon of sledding. The sun was low and threw pinks, ochres and purples across the different snowy surfaces. Great fun to paint!”

Filed Under: 12 Days of Brooklyn, Look Tagged With: 12 Days of Brooklyn, Ella Yang, Frederick Law Olmsted, Prospect Park

Dreams of Egg Creams

December 8, 2012 by Bruce Campbell 2 Comments

Day Three • 12 Sips of Brooklyn

Brooklyn Farmacy, located in a former pharmacy/soda fountain that had been shuttered for decades, is a lovely throwback. It hits the right notes, with attention to detail, and use of authentic materials and techniques. This is not Disney, but a return to something real and evocative of old Brooklyn.

Brooklyn Farmacy, located in a former pharmacy/soda fountain shuttered for decades, is a lovely
throwback. It hits the right notes, with attention to detail and use of authentic materials
and techniques. This is not Disney, but a return to something real and evocative of old Brooklyn.

THE SCENE: A QUIET NIGHT ON A BATTLEFIELD half a globe away, a harmonica warbles mournfully. The hard-bitten combat veteran turns to the embedded reporter: “What do you miss most from home, Brooklyn?” “Sarge, when I get stateside, I’m gonna grab me a girl and my dog and get the biggest egg cream in town.” Well, maybe it didn’t go quite like that, but Phil Scott’s essay of return from Afghanistan nails that sense of longing for a Brooklyn of dream and legend. The boisterous city of today jostles with an older Brooklyn of memory that breaks through when you least expect.

A fair chunk of my childhood was spent as an urchin roaming the city on 15 cent subway tokens bought with nickels scrounged from pay phones. I often sojourned in Brooklyn, so when I started to work and play here as an adult, eventually came a hunt for the drink of my childhood, the ambrosia, the very essence of Kings County—the chocolate egg cream.

Egg creams, from left: Hinsch’s, Brooklyn Farmacy, Tom’s Restaurant

Craft beers and pour-over coffees are fine beverages but are essentially imports and upstarts; for artisanal beverages, the granddaddy has to be the egg cream. Its origin is shrouded in legend and many lay claim to patrimony, but no one doubts its Brooklyn DNA (a straightforward description is found in Fix the Pumps by Darcy O’Neil, a history of the soda fountain). A simple drink which contains neither egg nor cream, it is long on seltzer (cheap) and parsimonious in milk and chocolate syrup (costly), suited to the working class city of the early 20th century. The craft is in the construction, detailed in this post by Jay Keller. Making an egg cream is testimony to a time when soda jerk was a job and required more skill than pushing a button to dispense prepackaged milk shake. The foamy head that is the glory of the egg cream is achieved with application of technique with spigot and spoon.

Phil heads into Brooklyn Farmacy in Carroll Gardens to try his first egg cream.

So, this fall I took up the hunt to find my dream egg cream. First stop was Brooklyn Farmacy, a gem of an eating place at the corner of Henry and Sackett in Carroll Gardens. The tin ceiling and the wooden cabinetry are straight from the early 20th century. The store, an old pharmacy, was closed and left virtually untouched for decades until reopened in 2010 by Peter Freeman and Gia Giasullo, a brother-sister team that like to wear T-shirts proudly proclaiming themselves as “Jerk.” Such chutzpah!

Brooklyn Farmacy has taken a stand for authenticity, with fine attention to details. They use a carbonator and spigot to dispense the soda water and their chocolate syrup is the quintessential Fox’s U-bet. The store demonstrates a commitment to locally sourced and artisanal foods with a strong showing in Brooklyn products, including serving Brooklyn Cured ham in their grilled ham and cheese sandwich, and stocking many other small-batch products for sale.

My childhood obsession drove me to the chocolate egg cream, while my companions chose vanilla and maple (both were excellent, and the last appealed to my Canadian roots, despite its sacrilegious blend). Gia talked to us knowledgeably about the drink, noting that the egg cream must be made with a carbonator and served quickly, as the foam starts to disappear rapidly when the drink sits on the counter. She also eschews the drinking straw: “The straw pulls up the material at the bottom. It is better to drink it straight down so you taste each layer starting with the foam.” She also touted the obvious health benefits: “An egg cream has the same number of calories as a slice of buttered toast” with far less sugar than a similarly sized cola drink. Of note, the Farmacy charged the least for their egg cream: $2.50. As I remember it, the price of the egg creams I used to drink were about equal in cost to the subway ride to get to them, so the Farmacy’s price appears historically accurate.

Tom’s Restaurant is an anchor on Washington Avenue in Prospect Heights.

Next up was Tom’s Restaurant, the friendly anti-slick breakfast palace on Washington Avenue. Tom’s has an authentic feel of continuity with the past. And the egg cream was near-classic (they also use U-bet, for one) in taste and texture. The real problem, Tom… Tom… why the whipped cream on top? It killed the start of the egg cream experience—nose to foam spray. Are you doing it to justify the $3.50 price (nearly 3 times the inflation-adjusted price from 1962)? Tom’s: great for breakfast, ditch the whipped cream.

Hinsch’s window sign: These drinks would be history if white knights hadn’t rescued the soda fountain from closure in 2012.

Finally, an R train ride away (what I knew as the RR on the BMT line, children, for historical accuracy) in Bay Ridge, we tested the egg cream at Hinsch’s. I have to say I loved Hinsch’s the place; it really kicked up the nostalgia meter recreating the early ’60s of my first Brooklyn experience. On that, Hinsch’s scored; its egg cream was less than it could have been. The counterman was deft and skilled, but the soda issued from the standard soda gun seen in every bar and lunch counter these days and it felt wrong. I had planned my journey for what I hoped was to be the Mecca of fountains and was underwhelmed. Ah well, I will return to Hinsch’s, but will stick with the milk shakes.

Brooklyn Farmacy, I salute you. May your egg cream reign in the Brooklyn of dream and memory. For now, I gotta go grab Phil—there have to be more memorable Brooklyn egg creams out there and I must find them.

Brooklyn Farmacy
513 Henry Street, Carroll Gardens
718-522-6260

Tom’s Restaurant
782 Washington Avenue, Prospect Heights
718-636-9738

Hinsch’s
8518 5th Avenue, Bay Ridge
718-748-2854

Photos by Basia Hellwig; Bruce Campbell (Tom’s, window menu, recipe). Date stamp typographic design by Joy Makon Design. The font is Bauhaus, by Ed Benguiat and Victor Caruso, ITC, 1975.

Filed Under: 12 Days of Brooklyn, Food/Drink Tagged With: 12 Days of Brooklyn, 12 Sips and Tastes, 12 Sips of Brooklyn, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn Farmacy, Carroll Gardens, egg cream, Gia Giasullo, Hinsch's, Peter Freeman, Prospect Heights, Tom's Restaurant

Sufganiyot: Jelly Donuts for Hanukkah

December 8, 2012 by Basia Hellwig Leave a Comment

Day Three • 12 Tastes of Brooklyn

Sufganiyot in the window of Ostrovitsky Bakery in Midwood.

POTATO LATKES FRIED IN HOT OIL may be the iconic dish to eat at Hanukkah, but we hold a special place in our heart for sufganiyot, the deep-fried jelly-filled donut that Israelis go crazy about during this holiday. In The Book of Jewish Food, author and food scholar Claudia Roden tells us that the “Austro-Hungarian peasant carnival doughnut, which became a “royal” delicacy at the French court of Marie Antoinette has been adopted in Israel to celebrate Hanukkah because it is fried in oil”—oil to commemorate the miracle of a small flask of oil keeping the flame in the Temple alight for eight days. Like many famous dishes, though, its origins are the subject of Talmudic debate.

But never mind about that. How do I get my hands on some? The answer you’ll hear from Brooklyn connoisseurs will more likely than not be Ostrovitsky Bakery in Midwood. “We make thousands of them at Hanukkah,” the bakery owner tells me when I pay a visit, “thousands. We’ve been doing it every Hanukkah for 18 years.” To get a jump on the lines that will later form out the door, I bring home a supply to do a little early taste-testing with my friends. Our verdict: Maybe you could almost feed a family with one of them…but Hanukkah only comes once a year. Sweet, scrumptious.

Sufganiyot, in The Mile End Cookbook: Redefining Jewish Comfort Food from Hash to Hamantaschen. (Photo by Quentin Bacon)

Mile End Delicatessen in Boerum Hill has developed quite a fan club, too, for its sufganiyot, but sadly there will be none this year, co-owner Rae Bernamoff tells us. Sad for us, maybe; she certainly has bigger problems: Mile End’s central commissary kitchen, where it does all its baking (and curing and smoking and pickling) was flooded during Sandy. It’s in a Civil War era building on Pier 41 in Red Hook and “as with most of the waterfront,” she said, “the high tide surge pushed about four feet of water into our space. We’re still rebuilding.”

As a consolation, and to show solidarity, head to the deli itself for what sounds like a gut-busting $16 “surf and turf” latke special: two open-faced latkes—potato, celery root and parsnip pancakes—one topped with chopped liver, pickled eggs and gribenes (chicken or goose skin cracklings), the other with creamy whitefish salad with trout roe.

And if your heart is really set on some Mile End sufganiyot, then you’ll have to make them yourself. You’ll find the recipe in the very appetizing The Mile End Cookbook, by Noah and Rae Bernamoff. Latkes, too, and a lot more dishes “redefining Jewish comfort food.”

One more stop: Brooklyn Larder in Park Slope also has tasty jelly donuts (along with a full Hanukkah catering menu) but shhh, don’t tell anyone, they’re baked not fried.

Ostrovitsky Bakery
1124 Avenue J, Midwood
718-951-7924
The bakery is Shomer Shabbos: closes before sundown on Friday, reopens on Sunday.

Mile End Delicatessen
97A Hoyt St, Boerum Hill
718-852-7510

Brooklyn Larder
228 Flatbush Avenue, Park Slope
718-783-1250

Photograph (top) by Basia Hellwig. Date stamp typographic design by Joy Makon Design. The font is Bauhaus, by Ed Benguiat and Victor Caruso, ITC, 1975.

Filed Under: 12 Days of Brooklyn, Food/Drink, Uncategorized Tagged With: 12 Days of Brooklyn, 12 Sips and Tastes, 12 Tastes of Brooklyn, artisanal food, Boerum Hill, Brooklyn Larder, Hanukkah, jelly donut, Midwood, Mile End Delicatessen, Noah Bernamoff, Ostrovitsky Bakery, Park Slope, Rae Bernamoff, Red Hook, sufganiyot, The Mile End Cookbook

Lighting the Night to Celebrate Hanukkah

December 8, 2012 by Anne Mollegen Smith Leave a Comment

Day Three • 12 Views of Brooklyn

Photograph by Joy Makon; see Who’s Who.

DATING FROM THE SECOND CENTURY BCE, the beautiful tradition of lighting candles in the eight arms of a special candelabrum calls for using the candle from the ninth position, the shamash (usually at the center), to light each of the others day by day . It is part of the eight-day celebration of Hanukkah, which begins today. It commemorates the rededication of Jerusalem’s Holy Temple after a victory reclaiming the city from domination by the Maccabees. The spreading of light against the darkest time of year lifts spirits everywhere, and the intimacy of joining together to share a circle of light makes a powerful bond. This image was captured in Windsor Terrace in 2009, when all of Brooklyn was hushed and blanketed by a thick snowfall.