PicoBlog

If you see a guy at the Wegman’s in Brooklyn loading up his cart with nothing but Zweigle’s white hots and red hots and Nance’s mustard, that’s Brian Heiss, the owner of Brooklyn Hots, the new—and only—restaurant in New York City devoted to the regional food of Rochester.

There were already a lot of reasons to be thankful that Wegman’s, a supermarket chain born in Rochester in 1916, has a foothold in New York City. And now there’s another one: Brooklyn Hots simply could not exist without Wegman’s. Because it is the only place in town where Heiss can get some of the upstate products that are critical to creating his menu.

“Without the Wegman’s, I wouldn’t be able to get Zweigle’s,” said Hess. “Also, a component of the mac salad and a couple others things in the meat sauce.” Zwiegle’s is a sausage purveyor with roots in Rochester that go back to 1880. The company told Heiss that, until sales of white hots and red hots reach such a level as to make distribution of the dogs to New York City viable, shopping at Wegman’s was his best option. So he continues to make regular runs to the supermarket.

“People look at me funny” when he shops, he admitted.

I have traveled to Rochester seven or eight times over the past decade. With each trip I’ve delved further into the local delicacies, and I am ever amazed at the breadth and depth of the localized food scene. Few cities rival it for sheer number of regional specialties. (New Orleans, Providence, Buffalo and Chicago come to mind.) By my count, dishes and products that are native to Rochester include:

Garbage Plates A melange of macaroni salad, home fries or French fries, and a protein—typically a white hot, red hot, burger or cheeseburger—piled onto the same plate. Italian sausage, ham, fish and chicken are also possible ingredients. Think of it as potluck on a plate. The dish is credited to Nick Tahou Hots, a greek diner that was founded in Rochester in 1918. Tahou guards its ownership jealously, though similar plates are sold under other names all over town. A garbage plate is usually served with no niceties, either on a paper plate or in a styrofoam container.

White Hots A variant of the hot dog that originated in the German community in Rochester in the 1920s. It is composed of a combination of uncured and unsmoked pork, beef and veal. It is white because of the lack of smoking or curing. (Germans originally called them “white and porkies.”) They are traditionally served split open on a bun with onions and mustard and sometimes meat sauce.

Red Hots Also known as Texas Hots, usually made with beef or pork or both, and including a spice mix that contributes to their darker color.

Meat Sauce A grainy, soup-like sauce made of finely ground beef, tomato and various spices, including cumin, allspice and clove. It is ladled upon nearly everything, from hots to burgers to garbage plates.

Nance’s Mustard A spicy honey mustard with 1920s Rochester roots, now made in Macedon, Wayne County, by the Baldwin Richardson Foods Co. It is named after inventor Nancy "Nance" Delmarle of Rochester.

Chicken French A fried chicken cutlet served with a wine-butter-lemon sauce whose recipe and American name derives from the traditional Italian dish Vitello Francese. Rochester chefs changed the meat from veal to chicken.

Ground Rounds. I still don’t fully understand this, but many old restaurants in the Rochester area call their hamburgers “ground rounds.” Ground Rounds apparently use a different cut of meat.

Heiss, who is from Rochester, has all but Chicken French and Ground Rounds on the menu at his small restaurant in Clinton Hill, which opened in late March. His original pre-Covid plan for the Greene Avenue location was to open a wine bar with seafood-driven small plates. But the pandemic resulted in him decamping to Rochester for a few months to spend time with his parents.

“I really remembered the good things about Rochester,” said Hess of that time. “I think the pandemic caused this”—”this” being the restaurant.

When the landlord called and asked if he was still interested in the space, Heiss pivoted away from wine and went all in on a Rochester-food eatery. “It didn’t take too long” to put it together, he said. “I’ve been working on the components for years now. I've worked on my meat sauce for years.”

Word of the place got out quickly to those who understood what it means when a restaurant put the word “hots” in its name. In the initial days of Brooklyn Hots, seventy percent of the customers were lonesome, displaced Rochesterians missing the taste of home. There were lines and Heiss often ran out of food on the weekends.

Rochester itself got wind of the joint and not all the the coverage from Heiss’ hometown was positive. Some locals objected to the inclusion of healthy sides like broccolini and salad, as well as a veggie version of a garbage plate. Heiss says he’ll eventually have a vegan plate as well. The beef that goes into Heiss’ delicious smash burgers, meanwhile, comes from a farm in North Carolina.

SO, WHY HAS IT taken this long for Rochester food to get to Gotham?

Well, let’s look specifically at the garbage plate, which must be considered the centerpiece of Rochester eats. I believe the reasons the garbage plate has been kept from wider popularity are three in number. (And one of them isn’t the taste. Anyone who has had one, however skeptical they may have been at first, cannot deny the pleasure a plate conveys to one’s tastes buds.)

Reason one is the dish’s name, which is terrible. It’s difficult to express full-throated advocacy for a meal with such a handle. The dish will never get out from under it at this point, however. It’s been too long.

Reason two is the look of the thing. The term “ugly delicious” might have been coined with the garbage plate in mind. Like some other regional specialties I can think of (the spiedies of Binghamton, Chicago’s Italian beef, Cincinnati chili to a certain extent), it is unpretty in the extreme and almost impossible to photograph well.

Some garbage plate fans strongly believe that this is as it should be.

“Much like a good ramen shop, there’s a formula to the way this dish is plated, usually in a matter of seconds,” said Sean O’Donnell, a chef who has worked at such Rochester places as Aunt Rosie’s and Bar Bantam, and is a big fan of Rochester food. “For an authentic appearance however, I prefer styrofoam takeout or a large paper plate.” 

Brooklyn Eats has gone to great pains to counter the garbage plate’s sloppy optics. Its mixtures are carefully plated and, from a bird’s eye view, look like dazzling works of Abstract Expressionism. “I’ve worked on the line in places before,” said Heiss. “That was my favorite thing to do, presentation and plating.”

The third thing holding garbage plates back is the perception that they are drunk food, suitable primarily for sodden students seeing sustenance. This reputation is not wholly unearned. Rochester students looking to counter a night of carousing certainly do cotton to a late-night cheeseburger plate. But I’ve been the Nick Tahou many times and have seen plenty of sober working people and families enjoying the plates in broad daylight. O’Donnell thinks we can have it both ways.

“Garbage plates are just good food,” he said. “They’re awesome for lunch or dinner, but really hit the mark when you’re drunk. I’ve seen people with the strongest dietary requirements throw all of that out the window the second they step into a hots shop three sheets to the wind.” 

At Brooklyn Hots, your trash plate (and that’s what Heiss calls them, since Nick Tahou has trademarked the term “garbage plate”) is a build-it-yourself affair. It comes with a choice of two proteins, two sides and toppings. Proteins include hamburger, cheeseburger, white hot, red hot, grilled chicken, egg, bacon or veggie burger. Sides included home fries, French fries, mac salad, coleslaw, broccolini and side salad. Toppings included mustard, raw onions and meat sauce.

On a recent visit, I selected the house plate, which is cheeseburgers, mac salad, home fries, onions, mustard and meat sauce, but I substituted a red hot for one the burgers. Heiss’ meat sauce, which blanketed the burger and the red hot, is very fragrant, akin to the meat found in Cincinnati chili. The home fries are chopped very fine and come out crispy and crunchy, making them a good tactile contrast to the firm, yet creamy mac salad.

Take note that the trash plate here is a generous portion, almost impossible to finish on your own. Ordering one plate for two people is a good move. I finished about a third of mine. The rest I took home and slowly nibbled at over the course of watching two late shows on the television. Who needs popcorn when you’ve got a leftover garbage plate?

Heiss also ventures a bit beyond Rochester’s borders with pizza logs, a sort of cross between egg rolls and pizza rolls—and better than either—that are common to Buffalo. There are a few soft drinks on offer, but if you want an adult drink with your meal, its BYOB. Luckily, there’s an excellent vest-pocket wine store next door with which Hess is also affiliated.

Now, just to get Chicken French on the menu!

Theatre for a New Audience is currently mounting a rare and excellent production of Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White, a powerful and prescient 1966 play about interracial marriage in America by Black playwright Alice Childress. Though nearly sixty years old, the play feels like it could have been written yesterday, its social themes are so much still front and center in this nation. Childress, long neglected, is enjoying a moment lately. Her best known play, Trouble in Mind, was staged on Broadway last year. Brittany Bradford and Thomas Sadowski lead the excellent cast, with Veanne Cox delivered a scorching cameo. They are directed by Awoye Timpo… The best Landjäger—that is the semidried sausage traditional to middle Europe and a great walking snack—may be made at the Ridgewood Pork Store. Unlike most, it is moist, not dry, while still being firm… Grand Army has dropped a new cocktail menu that takes the Spice Girls as its theme. And, strangely enough, ginger is not in every drink… Wiggle Room (9 Avenue A., East Village) — a new bar from the Mister Paradise, Pretty Ricky’s, Boulton & Watt, and Drexler’s crew, will open for business on May 19. Wiggle Room has two floors. Downstairs—the wiggle part of the place—is a dance floor with a weekly rotation of DJs; upstairs is for conversation and cocktails by Will Krepop… Jon Neidich and Golden Age Hospitality will unveil Le Dive, a natural wine bar in New York City’s Lower East Side, at 37 Canal Street, later this month. (Neidich has a thing for dives. He opened Ray’s, the faux dive bar on Chrystie Street in 2019.) The place is meant to evoke the tabacs of Paris’ 10th and 11th arrondissements. There will be a selection of biodynamic wines curated by Ashley Santoro, a cocktail menu highlighting French aperitifs, and a menu by chef Nicole Gajadhar featuring small plates.

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