Brooklyn’s Famous
51 Court Street
White Plains, NY 10601 (Map it!)
Attendees: Shelley, Pat, Reid, Sylvia
On Saturday the WBC found ourselves in White Plains, witnessing a terror plot unfold. Ok, ok, it wasn’t quite that bad. We emerged from the Sub Shop (Brooklyn’s Famous, that is) on Court Street to find Martine Avenue blocked off by yellow police tape and guarded by some of White Plains’ finest. And a couple of mall security officers. After dealing with an elderly woman who was more upset about not being able to get into Macy’s than she was about the possibility of a bomb in the mall, we managed to piece together the story, and that was that the Galleria mall had been evacuated and Martine Avenue blocked off due to the a suspicious package somewhere inside the mall. The problem: I had parked my car right across the street from the mall and it was now sitting behind the yellow tape.
For the shocking conclusion to this story, you’ll have to read my breakfast review first.
So, we went low key at Brooklyn’s Famous Sub Shop, which is neither in Brooklyn nor, I’ll venture to say, famous. The Sub Shop is decorated with a 1950s malt shop theme, complete with a vintage sign that says Mountain Dew will tickle your insides. No thank you. Each booth has a small jukebox affixed to the wall next to it. Unfortunately they’re just for show, and we were unable to enjoy the greatest musical hits of yesteryear while we ate. The menu at Sub Shop is filled with typical diner-ish fare, and there’s just one page of breakfast items which feature what you’d expect: eggs, pancakes, waffles. I was momentarily sidetracked by the idea of burger nachos, which were listed on the page opposite the breakfast items, but quickly came to my senses and instead ordered a spinach omelette with wheat toast.
The food arrived and it was food. I wasn’t expecting a mind-blowing, spectacular meal from Sub Shop, I was expecting something average for a reasonable price, and that’s what I got. The spinach was well distributed through the omelette, but the omelette itself was very flat and lacked any other flavor. Meanwhile, they overdid it with the flavor on the homefries. My first bite revealed a pork flavoring. There were no visible bits of bacon mixed in with the home fries, which led me to suspect that the potatoes may have been cooked in bacon drippings. Great. About that time Reid mentioned that his potatoes had too much pepper. I didn’t know what he was talking about until I got a little farther down in my potatoes and then hit upon pepper city. It was like the cap had fallen off the pepper shaker and no one had noticed. Between the pepper and the strong pork flavor, I couldn’t finish my potatoes. The toast was, well, toast.
For cheap (the bill for all 4 of us, including beverages, came to around $33), simple diner-quality food in the White Plains area, Sub Shop is fine, but it’s certainly not worth a special trip and it ranks lower on the list out of all the places the WBC has visited.
Alright, you’ve stuck with me. Are you still wondering what happened to my car? After sweet talking a police officer, charming him with my charmingly charming ways…ok, ok, so I just walked up to a police officer and asked if I could save my car and he said I could go, if I went quickly, and I had to go alone–he didn’t want to let any other WBCer come with me, so it wouldn’t look like he was letting a lot of people past the yellow tape. My car was not accidentally detonated by the bomb squad and is safe to carry me to my future WBC adventures.
The end.
What I Had: Bacon and Cheese Omelet, potatoes, toast, coffee
What It Cost: ~8 bucks
Worth It: Not really
The Rating: 2.5/5
The Details: Brooklyn Famous appears to be straight out of the 1950’s, down to the linoleum counters, the song selections on the plastic, non-functional jukeboxes in every booth, and the B movie posters on the walls. It also is apparently unfamiliar with the nutritional revolution the rest of the world has seen in the last 60 years. The omelet I ate was greasy to the point where I was surprised it stayed on my fork, with salt to match. The potatoes were comparably greasy and incredibly peppery. I like pepper, and I like my potatoes peppery, but it was too much even for me.
Brooklyn Famous fits snugly with almost every other breakfast I’ve had in White Plains: not worth traveling even a moment out of your way for. I cannot, however, speak to the quality of the Famous extreme gourmet burgers which populate the menu. Given the preponderance of adjectives in their title, I’d probably steer away. There’s such a thing as overselling.
The Bottom Line: Probably worth the money, definitely not worth the heart palpitations
The Case: Brooklyn Sub Shop v. The Westchester Breakfast Club
The Venue: Downtown White Plains
The Facts: Brooklyn is a classic, fifties-style diner, with both the
decor and the menu inspired by that long-passed decade. The bacon
omelette was fine, but the potatoes that came with it were both too
greasy and soaked with pepper well beyond the point of edibility.
The Verdict: Remanded for further proceedings, to determine the
quality of the establishment’s “EXTREME gourmet burgers.”
Upon entering the establishment, you are immediately whisked back to the 1950’s, or at least that’s the idea.
Waiting for everyone to arrive, I perused the extensive menu. The lunch and dinner offerings were your usual grease fest diner foods, but more of the burger and fries variety. They also had a separate menu that listed just their “extreme” burgers, which included a burger so healthily named, “the porker”.
I stuck to the breakfast menu. Besides the usual offerings of eggs and “Belgin” waffles, they also had a series of 5 egg frittatas, served over home fries. Hmm, tempting, but I instead settled on some pancakes. There was one choice that intrigued me. The Elvis stack. It was two pancakes topped with peanut butter chips and bananas. I ordered mine without the butter and powdered sugar that all the pancakes are served with.
The pancakes were surprisingly good. The pancakes themselves were a little on the thinner side, and could have been cooked a more golden brown. But they were pretty good nonetheless. The peanut butter chips were a nice addition to the pancakes. To spread peanut butter would have been too much, but the chips gave a perfect amount of peanut butter without being overwhelming. No syrup required!
The czar says: I can’t say the breakfast is any better than anything offered in the Galleria food court, nor is the decor worth the visit alone. Unless, of course, you are in the mood for an extreme burger or a five egg concoction served over home fries.
Andrew L
December 5, 2010 at 10:44 pm
Thin, non-golden brown pancakes? That’s a fail in my book. pancakes will always have a base level of goodness, if they are not burnt or under-cooked, but using the correct amount of batter and cooking to the correct golden brown color is what makes the pancake, not this sloppy rush job i see in the picture.
I am now curious to find out if there is any breakfast place in white plains that Pat approves of. It in interesting that white plains, as up-and-coming as it is, suffers from bad-breakfast-itis.