BrooklynJay, who is just about moved back INTO the nabe, spent some time at Little Piggy (Market) this past weekend to chat up the owners and try some new food. Here's what he said about it:
so we grabbed lunch at smoke joint yesterday and ben was nice enough to give us a little food preview of the little piggy market, i think that's what it's gonna be called - gotta check my timeout to verify, which is slated to open next door sometime next week.
ben made a black eye peas salad which had black eye peas obviously, corn and heirloom tomatoes. he also gave us a little taste of a macaroni salad too. both were outstanding. as one of my friends said "this tastes like summer. this is the stuff you'd love to bring with you on a picnic." it was so fresh - those heirloom tomatoes...wow.
he also gave a little walk thru of the new space and it's really cool. it's going to sell items by weight, like the two salads above, so you can bring it home to accompany your own cooking. (They are some awesome sides that would go with just about anything.) It's also gonna accommodate seating for 12 people (for now) and offer, along with food by weight, a blue plate special type deal - a protein or two, a couple of sides, etc. for one set price.
the cool thing is they're gonna have good COFFEE and DESSERTS. Pastries! Pies! Oh My! Fresh baked in the morning! and the coffee's gonna be the same as the coffee served at some of the finer gourmet restaurants in the city.
the menu's gonna change according to what's fresh. If, for instances, they can get nice peaches then they'll not only have fresh peaches for sales - they'll also possibly have peach cobbler available too.
I think it's gonna be amazing. since the menus gonna change it'll allow ben and craig to both experiment and be creative and offer some dishes that wouldn't have fit at the smoke joint. (mention of fried chicken and meat loaf had my mouth watering.) i personally can't wait for it to open.
oh and the smoked joint was awesome as always! lunch definitely is the way to go - nothing is sold out yet and plenty of seats available. (the food coma afterwards and napping in the early evening were the only side effects.)
Another friend who lives nearby and was kind enough to give me her own witty spin on the place:
I was headed to Smoke Joint for a bag of Brooklyn wings to celebrate my roommate having moved out when I noticed that Little Piggy Market was finally open. After several weeks shrouded in secrecy the owners of Smoke Joint had finally opened what they billed as a little sister to their successful BBQ joint.
More different siblings could not be. You will not find a drop of barbeque sauce at Little Piggy, instead what you will find is a changing roster of salads, sandwiches, entrees and sides that are determined by what’s in season at the moment. On my first visit they were out of the meatloaf sandwich but I was encouraged to sample the chicken salad sandwich which was billed as “awesome” by the cute cook. Although I hate chicken salad I like cute cooks so I obliged. The sandwich was in fact quite good and huge and the heirloom tomato salad I got as a side was quite tasty as well. In order to round out my meal I decided to get a cupcake, which kudos to Little Piggy was frosted with cream cheese icing instead of the typical butter cream that seems to be plaguing other cupcakes around this city. The cupcake was tasty and baked in a stiff foil cup which necessitated the use of a fork to eat it and made my cupcake into more of a cake in a cup.
On a return visit I finally got to try the meatloaf sandwich that had eluded me on my prior visit. One bite and I knew exactly why it had sold out the day before. It consisted of crusty bread surrounding a warm slice of meatloaf, heirloom tomatoes and caramelized onions. To round out my meal I decided to forgo any vegetables and got a s’mores cookie that was crispy on the outside and nice and chewy in the center. Everything was tasty and despite its large size and slight messy factor and I finished every bite with the reckless abandon that can only come with dining in the privacy of my newly empty apartment.
Much like The Smoke Joint next door Little Piggy and its sociable staff are a welcome addition to the neighborhood.
Plus, here's some info from Brooklyn Based. Man, I need to get over there now.
(Lafayette at S. Elliott)
This morning, I was working on a little Fulton Street photo session when I came across 923 Fulton (bt Clinton and Waverly), open and being renovated! Many of you have asked WTF is going on, so I ran over and talked to the owner who was sweeping the sidewalk. The answer? Nothing, yet. For now, the space is just being generally renovated and a realtor is working on finding an interested business tenant for the storefront. The owner was really friendly, and asked me what I thought neighbors might want. I, of course, mentioned a bakery and a book store. Krumbs will be coming soon to CH North, but how nice would it be to have a bakery on Fulton?! She wants to avoid a business that'll be doing "heavy cooking," but anything else is fair game.
A week or so ago, I noticed that Frosted Moon Emporium on Vanderbilt just south of Myrtle looked closed. That made me sad, since despite the bad font on their awning, they often had some really cute things in there. However, a reader tipped me off to a new sign taped in the window:
