Smorgasburg returns, and so does this newsletter
Read on for mini-profiles of 4 new vendors at the market
A proud New York City tradition, Smorgasburg is more than just a food festival. It is a culinary spectacular and America's largest open-air food market. Operating three times a week in NYC during the spring and summer, this gastronomic destination has been a staple since 2011. It's a hub of diverse food vendors from around the world, drawing massive crowds and providing a platform for small business owners to showcase their unique offerings. The market has grown over the years, now spanning three locations in Brooklyn and Manhattan. The opening weekend is coming this week, April 5, 6, and 7, at the Williamsburg, Prospect Park, and World Trade Center locations.
During the new vendor preview, I had the pleasure of sampling Ethiopian stews served on perfectly spongey injera from Emeye Ethiopian, a dressed-up West Coast Smashburger, Colombian-style hot dogs loaded with toppings like bacon, coleslaw, melted cheese, and a variety of sauces, and lots lots more. A few stands stood out to me for their inventiveness and differentiation from the standard NYC offerings, and I called up the owners to tell me how they got started and what their plans are for the summer.
I belatedly realized that this whole post is just about carbs, but sue me, carbs are delicious.
The first stand I noticed was George Kaya’s Lisbonata, where he sells Portuguese egg tarts, otherwise known as pasteis de nata. These shatteringly crisp pastries have lived rent-free in my head since I first tried them in Macau in 2014, and Kaya’s version lives up to my memories. His lovely, smooth filling is just sweet enough, and in a departure from tradition, he’s selling additional flavors like pistachio and raspberry cream. If you’ve ever had a dan tat (a Hong Kong-style egg tart), it’s a similar experience as pasteis de nata inspired the Hong Kong version. But (and I’m about to be controversial) the original is by far my favorite.
Kaya is originally from Turkey but lived in Poland for many years. In 2016, he traveled to Portugal for the first time with his partner and “fell in love with Lisbon. At that time, I had my first pasteis de nata. I really liked the dessert and the experience that these little shops in Lisbon were providing. I just loved them.” This trip led to several more since “Poland is quite cold.” The more time he spent in Portugal, the more it resonated with him.
Kaya has always worked in food, but a little over a year ago, he decided he wanted to make the platonic ideal of an egg tart. He’s been perfecting his recipe ever since, “figuring out the perfect ratios, customizing the custard. I moved here six months ago, and… we couldn’t find [pasteis de nata] in New York. There were a couple of them, but they weren’t the way I imagined them.” Kaya decided he should be the person to introduce this world-class dessert to New York.
Kaya’s pastries are as good as the ones I ate at a famous egg tart spot in Macau. They're a perfect fit for Smorgasburg since they’re the kind of snacky, grab-and-go dessert that lets you move on to try lots of other treats without filling you up.
The next stand I was impressed with was Bagel Joint NYC, a gourmet, multicultural take on traditional Ashkenazi Jewish appetizing shops run by husband and wife team Will Sacks and Lanty Hou.
I got to try the St. Marks, a Japanese-inspired bagel, and was so surprised by my first bite that I saved the leftovers for breakfast the next day. It features wasabi cream cheese, smoked tuna “lox,” shiso cucumber salad, and scallions. Hou described it to me as an umami bomb. While that’s certainly accurate, the bagel is also subtle, building layers of flavor that feel recognizably Japanese. The miso everything bagel provided a savory backdrop for the wasabi cream cheese and smoked tuna to build upon, and the shiso cucumber salad completed the experience by lightening the otherwise heavy sandwich.
The two former music industry professionals met in graduate school at NYU and pivoted into food when live entertainment shut down during the pandemic. Sacks had always been a baker, but he had more time to experiment with his bagel recipe during lockdown. Hou was working on a music video in Los Angeles, brought some of his bagels to the artist to try, and heard a comment about how special New York water is. She grabbed a flask of LA tap, flew home, and filmed a quick Tiktok video with Will to see if the hype was real. “We woke up the next day, and it had 20,000 views.” He kept developing that social media presence until he was confident he could quit his job, and the momentum has kept building from there.
Bagels have always been a part of Sacks’ life. He told me, “Growing up Jewish in the New York area, bagels were interested in me before I was ever interested in bagels…pretty much every time we were in the city we were stopping at H&H on the way back to grab hot, fresh bagels which we would crush in the back of their wood paneled station wagon.” Sacks’ love of bagels is so intense that in his 8th-grade public speaking class, he gave a lecture on the history of his favorite carb.
Hou, however, grew up on the opposite side of the world. Taiwan isn’t an island well-known for bagel-making, but she says, “Weirdly enough, in the neighborhood where I learned violin, there was a deli counter, and I remember my Dad brought me in there, showed me a bagel and said, ‘This is a Jewish bread.”’ Costco had bagels, and if you know where to look in Taiwan, you can find “some really strange bagels.” But when she moved to New York, she fell in love with bagels all over again. Sacks even mentioned that “She introduced the concept of me to her sister as ‘I’m dating this Jewish guy, he makes really great bagels.’”
Sacks says the couple’s friend group resembles “a UN-style meeting.” They wanted to offer flavors that reflected that diversity in their bagels. “To make a Turkish bagel you need to ask a Turkish person, ‘Is this okay? Is this honest?’... It’s about the stories of our food. It’s amazing how many common connections there are once you scratch under the surface because the thing that makes Korean gochujang so savory is the same thing that makes a bagel super savory, it’s barley, malted barley. And the more we can pick at and expose the ties that bind, the stronger I think all of us are.”
The Jamaican patty is another NYC staple food that is getting a makeover at Smorgasburg this year. These savory pastries are so ubiquitous in the city that you don’t need to be in a Jamaican restaurant to find them. Julian “Tosh” Chareton of Tosh’s Patties says, “Patties are everywhere. They’re in pizza shops, other places around the city, but they’re usually two or three bucks, with indistinguishable fillings.” Something of a utilitarian snack. But Tosh’s Patties are different.
“I thought it was a good idea because I love Jamaican patties, but it’s kind of hard to find high-end, high-quality ones. I figured I could bring a fun spin to it.” Chareton started his business in October 2023, applied for Smorgasburg, and was accepted as a new vendor by November. In other words, he’s doing something right.
The first bite of his beef patty briefly made the world fall away. The pastry has just enough bite, and using a complex vegetable medley and better ingredients transforms this simple snack into a moment of zen. I also sampled his vegan mushroom patty, which is a more than satisfying option for the vegetarian in your life.
Chareton is a New York City native who first heard about Smorgasburg, “pretty early on, like the early 2010s. I was in high school at the time.” He studied hospitality management at the University of Delaware, moved back to the city, and started working in the restaurant industry. “I’m not a trained chef. I was more in the front of house, a mixologist and bartender. And it was fine up until I felt like I could take life up a notch.”
Jamaican food is also personal to Chareton, whose mom is Jamaican from St. Mary’s Parish and whose dad is French. He says he wanted to serve, “quick, delicious, on the go food,” while also changing the narrative around Jamaican cuisine as “cheap food in a way, diminishing the true quality of it.” He wants to bring that idea to the masses, with the ultimate goal of selling his patties in supermarkets nationwide, becoming “the next Hot Pocket.” His menu also includes chicken tenders drizzled with honey and coconut flakes, banana fritter ice cream sandwiches, and Tosh’s Punch. This homemade tropical drink will also be available with the booze of your choice from the Smorgasburg bar. I got to try the nonalcoholic version, and it’s an appropriately refreshing contrast to the stand’s heavier offerings.
The last vendor I spoke with runs Gotcha Focaccia, an adorably branded stand selling Italian breads with a whimsical bent. From the enamel pins to the Smorgasburg bingo cards she’s handing out, Meira Bennett’s stand would be a delight to look at before you even considered whether her focaccia was salty, bouncy and, as a fan on her website put it, “magically fluffy.” The texture of her bread is impressive, but I was particularly enamored by the simultaneously bright and decadent taste of her mortadella focaccia, which is topped with pesto, ricotta, and mortadella.
Her menu diverges sharply from tradition, though. Gotcha Focaccia is another business that incorporates international flavors into recognizable breads, and Bennett tops her focaccia with everything from za’atar to kimchi and cheddar cheese. “Nothing really is one-dimensional, and if it is one-dimensional, it’s with the highest-quality ingredients possible… When it comes to choosing the flavors, it is a creative process. It’s experimentation.”
That being said, she’s carrying on a family tradition with great seriousness. Bennett is now a third-generation NYC woman business owner.
Bennett grew up in a Jewish household and was a baker from an early age. “I loved making cakes, but I also moved into baking bread when I was a teenager. I started off making artisanal loaves but once I started making focaccia, I really never looked back.” That love of focaccia grew as she got older, (leading her friends to write a song about how good it was, and last year, Bennett spent time in Liguria, Italy, studying with the masters.
She’s thrilled to be a part of Smorgasburg, an event she has fond memories of from years past. “I waited in line for the raindrop cake. I tried the ramen burger… [At Smorgasburg] there’s the ability to do one thing and do it really well. Find your niche, find your customers through that.” Bennett used to work in marketing, so, “I’m very aware about our setting. We’re going into a market where people are coming not only to enjoy food, but to enjoy the experience. You can go to any other restaurant, but if you go to Smorgasburg, you’re there for the vibes.”
These vendors provide just a sliver of the exciting dishes to try at Smorgasburg this summer, and if you’re in NYC you should make time to check it out. Smorgasburg is located at the Oculus at World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan, the original Williamsburg waterfront location, and at Breeze Hill in Prospect Park.
What I’m into Right Now
Podcast: Worlds Beyond Number is a hybrid of an audiobook and a D&D actual play show. The cast consists of improv veterans and I burned through it so fast that I had to join their Patreon for juicy bonus content.
Restaurant: I recently visited Golden Diner for the first time, and it was very worth the wait. The waiter’s enthusiastic reaction to my order made it clear that the Thai Cobb Salad is a bit of a sleeper hit, but the combo of the bird’s eye chili vinaigrette and the crispy bacon made it a standout order. The crunchy vegetables provided a lovely contrast to the famous honey butter pancakes and the shatteringly crispy wings.