Isabelle Dervaux will be bringing us her monthly reviews, accompanied by her beautiful photos, of Brooklyn businesses she finds fascinating, unique, or just plain cool! This month: The Brooklyn Kitchen and The Meat Hook.
The Brooklyn Kitchen
Going food shopping next to the BQE does not sound very romanic but for parents wanting to steal a few hours away from the kids, taking the Couples Cooking Class at The Brooklyn Kitchen could undo your preconceptions. You and your partner can spend Friday date night in their giant kitchen labe, where a specially selected wine will be served with the meal you have concocted with six other couples.
The Brooklyn Kitchen, brainchild of husband and wife team Taylor Erkkinen and Harry Rosenblum, relocated from Lorimer to Frost St in 2009.
A meatless gourmet class is also offered for vegetarian couples.
Along with the knife skills and butchering classes, the Couple Class fills up very quickly and may be sold out a month in advance. Angelo Womack and Anthony Falco from the famed Roberta’s in Bushwick teach a popular pizza class that also sells out fast. Those with more specific culinary ambitions can learn pickling from Bob McClure or how to brew beer at home in the second kitchen upstairs.
In addition to selling serious kitchen equipment and cookbooks, The Brooklyn Kitchen sells local and organic products and goes hyper-local, carrying honey from its own aviary on the roof of the building.
Knives are everywhere. The staff will be happy to open one of many drawers and show you the traditional handmade Kikuichi knives from Japan.
You may notice the creative use of metal knife cast-offs in the staircase but not to worry, if you come with small children, they’ll less likely be interested in the knives than filling up their mini shopping carts and playing in the wooden toy kitchen supplied just for them.
Talking about Japan, the store carries everything you need to cook Japanese from peasant food to sushi delicacies. Pictured above is the best of the best lunch boxes – the bento box (one of my many container obsessions) priced at $18.99
The Meat Hook
Sharing the 7,000 square foot space with the Brooklyn Kitchen are Tom Mylan, Ben Turley and Brent Young, the three young superstar butcher-partners at the Meat Hook. Sara Bigelow and Matt Greene have recently joined the group.
Practitioners of the “whole animal” movement the Meat Hook staff have fun behind the counter experimenting with lamb bacon, customizing dog treats and coming up with names for their sausages from trashy to classy.
You can buy traditional cuts of beef, lamb, pork and poultry produced locally by small farms or purchase prepared dinners and sides on the way home from work. Also available are special-order items like semi-boneless quail or a whole roasted pig when entertaining larger groups.
Jasper, 16 months old, was very interested in the offerings.
Both stores host field trips with local schools on weekday mornings to teach students about food sourcing, cooking and sustainability.
The Brooklyn Kitchen 718-389-2982
The Meat Hook 718-349-5032
100 Frost St. at the corner for Frost and Meeker
East Williamsburg
www.thebrooklynkitchen.com
Monday to Saturday 10am to 8pm
Sunday noon to 6pm
L Train at Lorimer
G Train att Metropolitan
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A native of Valenciennes, France, Isabelle Dervaux has twenty-five years experience as an artist and illustrator in the magazine publishing and advertising world. She’s worked for Vogue, The New Yorker, Barneys, and for top clients around the world. She has had shows of her work in Paris, New York and Tokyo and has also taught Illustration and visual storytelling at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco and Parsons The New School for Design in New York. Isabelle started creating “visual biographies” —still image sequences that tell stories of people and families, when she took on the task of sorting out 30 years of her own family photos. Visual biographies contain collages, illustrations and ephemera that complement the stories the photos tell. Isabelle now teaches the skills and techniques she has discovered to help busy families enjoy their photos and videos instead of storing them in a box or a hard drive to be forgotten. Her Photo Organization Portfolio is here and her Illustration Portfolio is here.