Each week on the Food Chain, we ask a chef to describe a dish he or she recently enjoyed. The chef who prepared the dish responds and then picks his or her own memorable meal. On and on it goes. Last week, Bruce Hill, executive chef of Bix in San Francisco, drooled over the torta ahogada at La Superior in Brooklyn. Now we want to know what’s recently impressed La Superior’s owner, Felipe Mendez.
Who: Felipe Mendez, owner of La Superior and Cantina Royal in Brooklyn
What: Scuttlebutt sandwich
Where: Saltie, Brooklyn
“There’s a place called Saltie, which is in Williamsburg, and they make fantastic sandwiches. I like them all, to be honest. They have one — I don’t remember what it’s called — but it has capers; it’s really good. The name of the sandwich is the Scuttlebutt. It’s just fresh, fresh. It has boiled eggs, I believe; it has parsley, capers, anchovies. They make it with their own housemade focaccia and it’s great. It’s very small, almost like a storefront, and I think it’s three or four ladies who run it, and they’re really nice. And it’s two blocks from my house, so I love that. I have two restaurants and I go there all the time, so that says something.”
Saltie co-owner Caroline Fidanza responds:
“It definitely starts with the bread, which we make in house. It’s focaccia that we make here, which has a lot of olive oil and sea salt. I feel like a lot of what makes it good are the homemade ingredients, which are the aïoli and the bread. Then it has the salty elements, like olives, mixed herbs, capers, mixed pickles, feta, and hard-boiled eggs. It’s kind of like a Greek-salad sandwich. It’s rich and creamy and salty and briny — there’s no restraint in it.”
