Dear Members,
What a crazy past few weeks it’s been. Work picked up like mad in preparation for a trip to Europe that I only just returned from last night. After many nearly sleepless nights, and countless airline miles accumulated, it feels like I can finally take a moment to catch my breath. It’s also, at long last, time to give some tender loving care to a deeply neglected newsletter audience. There there. Please don’t worry. Please don’t be mad. Willy’s home, and he’s not going anywhere. The Served Supper Club lives!
We’ll be experimenting with new forms of content that we can more reliably deliver should scheduling get difficult again. Stay tuned for updates on that front.
Our dinner at Grindhaus was truly a highlight of this whole journey so far. The food, the hospitality, the company. All were as good as it gets. So please, sit back, relax, and enjoy another trip to Red Hook - courtesy of the Served Supper Club. We’ll be back in Manhattan for our next review. I promise.
THE WAR ON PORK
Welcome to S.R.V.D Network News - your source for food news. I’m Will Movsovitz, and today’s top story is an update on the ongoing War on Pork in America. We recently received a breaking news bulletin from the Food and Drug Administration. They have officially lowered the recommended cooking temperature for pork to 145 degrees Fahrenheit. A whopping 15 degrees below the previous guidance of 160 degrees (note this guidance does not apply to ground pork - keep cooking that to 160 my peeps).
The move is being heralded as a major victory for the pro-pork movement. Many of whom had already shrugged off 160 degrees in favor of a juicier, more medium rare cook. While official policy might state that your pork can be pink, in practice many are still petrifying their pig. Burning their boar - if you will. Pork just can’t seem to shake it’s reputation as a meat that needs to be cooked to death.
You may be wondering why the FDA imposed such staunch statutes in the first place. This might come as a shock to you readers, but the FDA does not care about your dining experience. They care only about whether or not a food has the potential to make your tummy - or other body parts - hurt after you eat it. Turns out pigs are quite adept at carrying those types of pathogens. It’s theorized that sickness is one of the primary reasons why both Judaism and Islam have disavowed pork. Brucellosis, trichinosis, and pseudorabies (all guaranteed to make at least your tummy hurt) can be carried by pigs, but modern day farming techniques have lowered infection rates drastically. These bugs can also be killed by cooking pork to 145 and then resting for 3 minutes - per updated FDA guidance.
Countless Americans, myself included, grew up thinking that they didn’t like pork. It was always dry to the point of being practically inedible. The most common offenders were pork chops and pork tenderloins. Steak-ish cuts like these don’t tenderize with additional time on the heat. A pork shoulder needs to go longer and hotter than a chop because you have to break down a lot of connective tissue and intramuscular fat. Pulled pork at 160+ is soft and tender. A pork chop at 160 can break a window.
We go now to Grindhaus, one of the strongest soldiers in the fight to prove just how good pork can be. When owner / server / sommelier / front-of-house multi-tool Erin Norris told us that their kombu-brined thiccy-boi would be “the best fucking pork chop you’ve ever had in your life”, I’ll admit I was skeptical. I had flashbacks to the ghosts of pork chops past. Jaw hurting from excessive chewing. Knife bending against the leather-like texture. Dog refusing to eat it because even he has standards.
Erin was right, her porcine prophecy fulfilled. Chef Kevin Speltz is slinging the best fucking pork chop that I’ve ever had in my life. It was so good, that Grant and I were texting about it a few days later. The presentation, the cook, the sides. It’s the pork chop of my dreams. Please keep fighting the good fight.
I’m Will Movsovitz with S.R.V.D,
The Supper Club
Shout out to Subhankar for joining us at Grindhaus! We’d love to eat with more of our subscribers, so please leave a comment if you’d like to come with us on the next one!
Barry from the Good Fork Pub let us know about Grindhaus when we dined there back in March. As is becoming a pattern with our Red Hook restaurants, they are both on Van Brunt Street - and separated by a 6 minute walk. We didn’t know at the time of his recommendation that Barry and Erin Norris, the owner of Grindhaus and handler of all things front of house, used to be colleagues! Barry was the owner of the now-closed Red Hook institution Bait and Tackle. Erin was the manager.
Also formerly a music publicist and dominatrix, she set her sights on restaurant ownership back in 2008. She bought the space for Grindhaus on April Fool’s Day. It took years of time, effort, and money to get everything ready to go. Then just a few weeks before opening day, Hurricane Sandy completely flooded the place - destroying all of their equipment and much of the infrastructure the team put in. Erin is extremely resilient. She launched a successful Kickstarter campaign and was able to get the place open in 2014 to much acclaim. Then a pandemic hit while Erin was in Italy, forcing them to close yet again until 2022. And then - they got a new chef and changed much of the menu and the overall dining experience. Less tweezers.
The Grindhaus of today is small - maybe 20 seats in the whole place give or take. You make a reservation by texting them, so you’ll never know what’s available until you reach out. There are a few tables on the right side of the restaurant, and a bar runs along the left. Erin flies through the corridor in between with plates of food and glasses of wine. Chef Kevin Speltz is the rock star in the back of the house turning out wildly creative flavor combinations through the window. This place has a ton of character and is genuinely fun to eat at. There’s lots of red, a painted ceiling, sporks, and a French rotating soap (not jerking soap) in the bathroom. Best of all though, Erin cares so much for her customers. Her passion and dedication to the space pours out at soon as you meet her. We can’t thank her enough for her overwhelming generosity and for making Grindhaus happen against all odds.
Come with an open mind, and an empty stomach. You’ll encounter people and foods that you never would have otherwise. And that’s what makes Grindhaus truly exceptional.
Erin recommended the below, and we ordered it all:
Starters
Po’ Bao - fish cake, tartar sauce, american chz, steamed bun
Harissa Broccoli - tofu, fried tortilla, chili oil, mint
Artichoke Dumps - shitake coconut, pickled mirepoix, pandan oil, couscous
Mains
Chicken Sandwich - buttermilk fried breast, roasted red pepper mayo, pickle, fries
Pork Chop - kombu brine, potato gratin, gochujang gravy
The Grindhaus menu is like a fever dream mish-mash of food you want to be eating. Some of these dishes really come out of nowhere, but everything we ordered was really stellar. The Po’ Bao is one that flew in out of left field but blew us away. Erin described it as a mix between a filet-o-fish and a Big Mac. The bun was soft, the fish was freshly fried, and her description of the flavor is spot on. The Harissa Broccoli was spicy, but the chili oil gave it depth, and the yogurt / mint cooled things down. Artichoke Dumps were fried and tossed in coconut milk and Thai basil. It scratched both my Thai green curry and dumplings itches in the same dish. Fried chicken sandwiches always hit, but the one at Grindhaus hits harder than most. The bun was homemade, and that chicken was HOT! Pickles popped too. Yummy. Finally - I’ve been gassing up the pork chop all newsletter, but it was truly a revelation. A thick-cut, well-brined, perfectly cooked masterpiece with a slab of deep fried potato gratin. Hilariously indulgent.
Po’ Bao
Ever since having this dish, I’ve been thinking wtf even was that. And why did I like it so much? It’s like a bao bun Filet-O-Fish with Big Mac sauce and American cheese, but it just completely works. The fish is fried perfectly, the bun is soft and somehow blends in with the cheese. The slaw crunches and sours to interrupt that soft gooiness. I want more of these right now.
Artichoke Dumps
The Artichoke Dumps have to be one of the most beautifully named dishes in all of New York. They taste pretty good too. They’re not as artichoke forward as they are coconut milk and Thai basil forward. You typically don’t get anything fried in a Thai Green curry, so this was an exciting new experience of textures and flavors. One of those dishes where you think - “I’ve tasted this before, but not like this.”
Harissa Broccoli
I love vegetable dishes that I can really get excited about. Charred broccoli just makes sense with spicy harissa and a deep, complex chili oil. Those ingredients alone could work, but the tofu adds substance, the mint freshness, and the yogurt cools things down. You could easily put this over rice and have a fire little lunch bowl. It works on a plate too, though.
Chicken Sandwich
The chicken sandwich wars are thankfully a thing of the past - sort of. In 2019, Popeyes had the revolutionary idea to copy Chickfila’s whole flow. Word for word. Bar for bar. What kicked off was market saturation and corporate weirdness. Everybody needed a chicken sandwich - and the brands on social media were firing off cringe marketing campaigns left and right.
The Grindhaus chicken sandwich is down to earth. It doesn’t come with the hype that a multi-million dollar marketing budget can generate, but look how happy we were eating it! A big piece of well-fried chicken on a homemade bun. Throw some slaw on there with a roasted red pepper mayo. Oh, you might just have something. Then you add fries with a little mayo-based dipping sauce? Might as well call your momma.
Pork Chop
A beautiful behemoth of a dish. Behold it. Run from it. The result will be the same. You’ll dig in and be blown away. The kombu brine really got deep into the meat. As a result, every single bite of pork is well-seasoned. We spoke before about the war on overcooked pork, and this dish is a testament to medium rare pork. It was so juicy! Couple a perfect pork chop with a brick of deep fried potatoes au gratin - and are you kidding? Use the spuds to mop up whatever gochujang gravy didn’t make it onto the pork. What a dish.