New York subscribers received unique early entry to this story in Consuming New York, a e-newsletter that includes meals information and recommendation straight from our critics’ mouths. Enroll right here to get it in your inbox.
Picture: Grub Road
It’s clear we bear some accountability for the road that has just lately begun to fascinate Prospect Heights neighbors. When Grub Road known as Radio Bakery’s turkey-pesto sandwich the most effective sandwich of 2024, we weren’t alone — loads of our fellow omnivores had been singing Radio’s praises, too. So after all a queue fashioned exterior Radio’s first location, on India Road in Greenpoint, which led the bakery to specify on its menu when sure objects would go on sale (croissants at 7:30 a.m., non-croissaint pastries within the “late morning,” focaccia at 10 a.m., sandwiches at 11). When every would promote out, after all, was anybody’s guess. You’d strive your luck and convey a guide.
Lastly, after months of anticipation, Radio’s second location opened in Prospect Heights, taking on the Underhill Avenue area that when housed a Blue Marble Ice Cream. (Radio is much from the one hype bakery to take care of rabid demand and never even the one one to develop on the energy of it; Brooklyn Heights’s L’Appartement 4F just lately opened its second location within the West Village.) Whether or not doubling its footprint has alleviated stress on the unique I can’t say, however I can let you know this: At 12:18 p.m. on a Thursday throughout opening week, I used to be the 18th particular person on the road, which snaked properly previous the doorway, right down to the coin-op laundromat three doorways down, from whose window a lady warily eyed the assembled waiters: a dad with two children and a stroller, one other fuzzy-jacketed man with a fuzzy-onesied child strapped to his chest, quite a lot of 20- and 30-somethings in carpenter denims and Birkenstock Bostons, a reasonably younger girl in a banana clip who stepped away momentarily to take a selfie in opposition to the bakery’s glass-front doorways.
This was, comparatively talking, nothing. The Brooklyn Eagle reported a line 70 robust on the bakery’s opening day in the beginning of the month. I’m glad so as to add that my very own wait was a lot shorter: At 12:33 p.m., I used to be safely out of some drizzle and contained in the area, which is bigger and lighter than Greenpoint’s. Within the open kitchen at again, a crew of bakers piped pistachio cream into and onto hulking croissants. Up entrance, we fashioned one other line across the counter and ordered cafeteria model. “Has it been like this all week?” I requested the lady who rang me up. “Just about,” she mentioned.
Growth hasn’t affected high quality so far as I can inform. I loved the turkey sandwich as I at all times do, with its fearless embrace of garlic, and a advisable spicy tofu sandwich as properly, which had a pleasant chile spice and perhaps a bit an excessive amount of tahini. I usually choose Radio’s breads to its pastries: Its regionally well-known brown-butter corn cake is a bit puddingy and underbaked for my tastes, and its chocolate-chunk cookies are good, however normal, coffee-shop fare. All of it comes, understandably if frustratingly, at new-standard costs. I spent $50 and alter on two sandwiches and three pastries.
If I lived and labored in Prospect Heights, I may simply think about being an everyday customer, strolling up from Grand Military Plaza for a sandwich deal with on occasion. And I’d by no means begrudge Radio, or any of its compatriots, its success. However at a sure level, the hype cycle eats away at its victims on each side, the distributors and the purchasers. At what level, we’ve got to marvel, is the product being provided the bread or the wait? I took my field of treasures to one of many two sidewalk tables. “Good?” I overheard from a pair strolling by. “Imagined to be excellent.” One other girl trundled by. “There’s nonetheless an enormous line,” she mentioned into her cell.
Join Consuming New York
Weekly meals information, straight from our critics’ mouths and only for subscribers.
Vox Media, LLC Phrases and Privateness Discover
See All