From Foie Gras Doughnuts to Cinnamon Toast Ice Cream, These Are Brooklyn’s Best Edible Collaborations
Want to know what really defines Brooklyn’s vibrant food scene? It’s not bespoke cocktails in mason jars or dangling Edison lightbulbs, but the intimate relationship restaurants form with their surrounding communities. Owners chat with neighbors, congregated on stoops. Chefs wave hi to patrons on their way to the subway. And generations of families celebrate not just anniversaries and job promotions at their favorite local eateries, but vital, everyday milestones, such as breakfast, lunch and dinner.
And that sense of unity exists not just between restaurants and customers, but amongst the restaurants themselves, which, instead of simply existing side-by-side in tense, unspoken rivalry, root for each other, champion one another, and occasionally, even work directly together, joining forces to create a whole even tastier than the sum of its parts.
So in the true spirit of Brooklyn, we’re honoring a few of its most delicious collaborations, from Do or Dine and Dough’s famous, foie gras-stuffed pastries, to Brooklyn Brewery and Liddabit Sweets’ delightfully boozy caramels.
Liddabit Sweets + Brooklyn Brewery = Beer and Pretzel Caramels: These Industry City-based candymakers frequently pool resources with other area artisans, such as Brooklyn Roasting Company (bourbon-coffee-bacon caramel corn), Salvatore Brooklyn (fig-ricotta caramels) and Brooklyn Brewery; which lends its Brown Ale and India Pale Ale to beer and pretzel caramels and tipsy turtles—i.e., Slurtles—made from caramel-covered pretzels or potato chips, enrobed in a dark chocolate shell.
SCRATCHBread + Milkmade = Cinnamon Toast Ice Cream: The handcrafted ice cream subscription service, MilkMade, delivers pints of ice cream right to your door. And if you’re especially lucky, the flavor of the month might just come courtesy of Bed Stuy’s own SCRATCHBread, which has supplied shortcake for MilkMade’s Strawberry Shortcake, and baked cinnamon sugar loaves especially for the Five Dollar Toast (other oh-so-Brooklyn options include the Grady’s Manhattan, inspired by the cocktails at Post Office, and made with Grady’s Cold Brew).
Fletchers + Brooklyn Kolache = Smoked Char Siu Kolaches: Fletcher’s pitmaster, Matt Fisher, is a total Brooklyn booster. Not only does he smoke the meats sold at Shelsky’s new deli counter, but he barbecues sweet, Chinese char siu for Brooklyn Kolache’s savory, Czechoslovakian buns as well.
Stumptown + Mast Brothers + Sixpoint = 3Beans: Talk about a dream team—Red Hook’s Sixpoint, Williamsburg’s Mast Brothers, and Portland’s Stumptown (we’ll give them a pass) united to create this Baltic Porter-style beer, with roasty, toasty undertones of chocolate and coffee.
Do or Dine + Dough = Foie Gras Donuts: With all due respect to Nippon Nachos and Chicken & Woffals, the Foie Gras Donut quickly emerged as Do or Dine’s signature invention—an explosion of sweet jelly and musky chicken liver, stuffed inside puffy pastry from Dough.