Brooklyn’s Best Fish Sandwiches
Can we interest you in a fish sandwich? Sure, binging on deep-fried food (on bread) may seem counterintuitive as we plunge headlong into bathing suit season, but there’s no denying the seductive, high-lo convergence of fresh-from-the-ocean filets, swaddled in breading and buns. And as Tyler Kord, founder of No. 7 Sub and author of the recently released A Super Upsetting Book About Sandwiches puts it; “A fried fish sandwich has all of the decadent, crunchy fried goodness of a fried chicken sandwich but is filled with delicious, delicious fish instead of overcooked white meat or unnecessarily fatty thighs. And nobody puts tartar sauce on any other sandwich, even though it’s one of the greatest sauces ever!”
Oh, and they’re a paradisiacal pairing for beer, so throw on a maxi dress and check out Brooklyn’s best.
Greenpoint Fish & Lobster
Having made the cut amongst our top 50 sandwiches in all of Brooklyn, you can bet that Greenpoint’s market-fresh sammy soundly schools the fishwich pack; featuring a line-caught, daily-changing filet deposited on griddled sourdough slices from Amy’s Bread, and finished with housemade tartar sauce, arugula, shredded cabbage, tomato and chilies.
114 Nassau Avenue, Greenpoint
Pork Slope
In stark contrast to the ingredient-by-ingredient virtuosity of Greenpoint Fish & Lobster and their aforementioned sandwich, Pork Slope keeps it real with their unabashed ode to McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish, which comprises bottom-feeding catfish and bacon crunched together on toasted white bread, and cemented with American cheese and sriracha, chef Dale Talde’s go-to condiment.
247 5th Avenue, Park Slope
Handsome Hank’s
Semilla may have supplanted Lake Trout long ago, but Baltimore’s signature sandwich lives on at Smorgasburg regular, Handsome Hanks — which deposits four, outsized fingers of fried whiting on squishy squares of Texas toast, capped with coleslaw and plastered at will with tartar and vinegary hot sauce.
Sea Wolf
With one foot in the water and one on land, sandwiches at this Bushwick newcomer run the gamut from wood grilled chicken and mushroom quinoa burgers, to grilled mahi mahi clubs stacked with bacon, lettuce, tomato and herb mayo, on an omnipresent Martin’s bun. We’re compelled to submit to the Sea Wolf motto, of Surf, Skate, Eat, Repeat.
19 Wyckoff Avenue, Bushwick
Delaware and Hudson Tavern
At the recently opened, even more casual adjunct to her Michelin-starred, Mid Atlantic cuisine-examining restaurant, Patti Jackson offers abundant, faintly Germanic dishes like skate schnitzel; fan-shaped, cabbage and tartar-sauce topped fish comically dwarfing a palm-sized brioche bun.
135 N 5th Street, Williamsburg
Bake & Things
Being that they specialize in the swollen, hollow-centered, deep-fried Caribbean dough balls known as bake, means that this popular Trini eatery excels in our hands-down favorite sandwich; the bake n’ shark. Although if you can’t bring yourself to order the less-than-sustainable filling, herring, saltfish and fried fish (generally catfish) are alternate options.
1489 Flatbush Avenue, East Flatbush
Brancaccio’s
It may seem an outlier on the vast, incontestably Italian sandwich menu, glutted with prosciutto, mozzarella and broccoli rabe, but the fleshy, fried tilapia at Windsor Terrace’s beloved Brancaccio’s is simple and spectacular, and is teamed with mesclun greens and a slick of housemade tartar, and tucked into a hunk of Caputo’s seeded bread.
3011 Fort Hamilton Parkway, Windsor Terrace
Tygershark
A combo Korean cantina/coffee shop/seafood-slinging surf shack, you’ll find whole fried porgy paired with banchan and bao at Prospect Heights idiosyncratic Tygershark — essentially assembly-required fish sandwiches.
581 Vanderbilt Avenue, Prospect Heights