Saltie

This place has been on my mind for months, ever since I first nipped on a Spanish Armada there back in November. Saltie is a tiny sandwich shop in Williamsburg - a few stools and a counter only maybe 10 inches deep - with a calming, oceanic decor. A lot of whites and blues and natural wood, like a Martha Stewart beach house foyer. But that daintiness is cut by the food itself - messy, exuberant, and relentlessly creative. Everything is made in house, from the focaccia and naan that the sandwiches are served on, to the ice cream, to the baked goods in the glass cabinet. Baked goods like a brioche bun filled with chocolate and topped with sugar crystals, and olive shortbread.

The real hook for me here though is what they do with vegetables. So much is made of pork as the food fad of the moment; for all its revelatory pleasures of texture and flavor, I find weaker chefs using it as a crutch, propping up mediocre dishes with its fat and salt. Not so at Saltie, where meat is available occasionally, but never missed. Sandwiches like the Scuttlebutt, with roasted beets and winter squash, and the Captain's Daughter, which features sardines and capers, both flourish without meat. I had a curried lentil soup once that had fennel, onions, cabbage, carrots, and celery, and was delicious with a honey corn muffin. You can only eat so many vegetable dishes studded with pork nuggets before you begin to long for a certain freshness that vegetables have when they're allowed to breathe.

But these dishes wouldn't be as compelling if they were presented as a part of a dogmatic vegetarian agenda, as is so common in vegetable-heavy restaurants. It feels so rare to find a place that puts vegetarian dishes on its marquee without a staunch dose of tie-dye, one earth, "health food" ideology. How about vegetables that are exciting and delicious, truthful and yet unexpected? A place where meat can exist in the food, but doesn't always have to?

From Per Se to McDonalds, most restaurants rely on meat to anchor so many of their dishes. At this time, with the current dismal state of American nutrition, I am excited by an example of American (Nouveau?) cuisine that provides a different model for eating. A cuisine that is so restless and satisfying, but one that I wouldn't be ashamed to universalize. Saltie makes meat an option not a requirement, or rather a condiment and not a foundation for the food. And they do it because it's delicious. It's defensible aesthetically, but at the same time manages to be defensible ethically. It feels so radical. I'm inspired.