Clinton Street Baking Company
4 Clinton Street
New York, NY 10002 (Map it!)
Attendees: Shelley, Andrew, Pat, Adam, Reid, Sylvia, Alan, Jeffrey
A year ago, I was absent from the WBC’s breakfast at the Clinton Street Baking Company. They went on a Monday morning, but I had that thing known as work.
It was tough. I remember receiving a text message from one of the WBCers informing me that I had missed “two hours of waiting in the cold and one hour of awesome deliciousness.” I like awesome deliciousness. And when I read the reviews, particularly the exaltations of the sugar cured bacon, which one member termed, I believe, a “nectar of the gods,” well, then I was really feeling bad.
So, when this year it was proposed that we partake of CSBC’s Pancake Month for dinner, I was in. I was in like…well, like you wouldn’t believe.
You see, every year, to brighten up those long, cold, dreary days of Februrary, CSBC offers up Pancake Month, with a different pancake special every two days. The Friday night we chose would feature Japanese Pumpkin Pancakes.
With all this hype about pancakes, you may be surprised to learn that I did not, in the end, choose pancakes for my dinner. After the long, cold wait we had endured, I felt I needed something more substantial.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start somewhere closer to the beginning, shall we?
All day at work on Friday my mouth was watering. Dinner was going to be good. The words “awesome deliciousness” skipped through my mind. Come quitting time, I was raring to go. In an attempt to save money, us Westchesterites decided to carpool rather than take the train. Yes, we saved money. But we also endured the Friday evening traffic into Manhattan. About two hours, a switch of drivers, and 20 minutes of circling the lower east side later, we found a (free!) parking spot just a block away from CSBC. We trotted over to join our compatriots…and then we waited. And we waited. And we waited. CSBC had been unable to give us a reservation, you see; but we had decided not to let that deter us from our mission. So we waited. And waited some more. We saw the coffee shop across the street close. We saw people leave the CSBC, but not enough to be able to push together tables to accomodate the 8 of us. So we waited. And waited. Then the hostess came out and told us that soon–soon!–we’d be able to go inside and eat. Reid tried to charm her with his most charmingest charm in the hopes of speeding things up, but she told us that everything was dependent on one last couple lingering at a table that would be needed for us, and advised us to stare at them hungrily through the window. (The hostess also confided in us that her job had been made better that evening by the couple of drinks she’d already had.)
Finally, the couple left, the tables were pushed together, and we were seated! CSBC had a menu posted outside and I had been eyeing some of the choices on the breakfast portion of the menu, since it said that breakfast was available all day. False advertising! We were presented with dinner menus only and our waiter informed us that breakfast was not, in fact, available at this time. However, CSBC has some of their breakfast items available on the dinner menu, such as the Clinton Street Omelette and the blueberry pancakes. Like I said, I needed something substantial, so I chose the Clinton Street Omelette. You get to pick two fillings, mine being cheese (I can’t for the life of me remember what cheese I selected–cheddar, I think, but I was in a hunger-induced daze) and carmelized onions. I also opted to add some chorizo sausage for an extra $2. And to warm my bones after our long wait in the cold February night air, I got a warm apple cider. (Unlike some of my companions, I opted to have my apple cider without the extra warmth of rum.)
By this time my stomach was begining to eat itself, so when we were brought our beverages and a plate full of warm biscuits, I could have jumped up and kissed our waiter. But I didn’t. Because there were biscuits to be eaten. They were warm and moist and buttery and just full of biscuity goodness. And just as quickly as we polished off that plate, someone appeared with a second plate for our table; we didn’t even have to ask. And then a plate of potato skins materialized! Unbeknownst to any of us, Jeff had ordered this appetizer for the table. Thanks Jeff! The potato skins were small enough to not be too filling and were balanced out nicely by the side of sour cream on the plate. Bonus points to CSBC for not making their potato skins too greasy.
But, the biscuits and potato skins could tide me over for only so long and after ahwhile my stomach began to churn again. At about 9:30 our meals finally arrived. This was the latest dinner I’ve had in quite some time. My omelette looked very tasty. So tasty that I momentarily forgot WBC rules and regulations and took a bite before a photo was taken. The plate was completely covered with lots of good stuff: accompanying the large omelette was a generous scoop of thin-cut French fries and a portion of mixed greens. The eggs of the omelette were fluffy and well cooked, and the fillings were well contained within the omelette; no stray bits sticking out the sides. The chorizo sausage was well distributed throughout the omelette and provided a nice burst of flavor, but not too spicy. The cheese and onions, however, seemed to reside mainly in the center of the omelette. The mixed greens were tossed in a piquant mustard dressing. The fries were thankfully not too salty and were well balanced between soft and crispy. Hungry as I was, I just couldn’t finish my whole omelette, which I regretted. I also stole a piece of a blueberry pancake from Pat; I had to sample it since blueberry pancakes are a, if not the, signature dish at CSBC. The pancake was fluffy and bursting with blueberries. Finally, ,I took a piece of the fabled sugar-cured bacon, which had a very subtle sugar coating. I was told, however, that the bacon this evening didn’t quite live up to the mindblowing quality of the bacon at last year’s meeting.
Dinner didn’t come cheap. We split the bill equally and each contributed $30 toward our dinner. I’d say the quality of the food was worth the money we spent. But the wait beforehand was brutal. I’d say that Clinton Street Baking Company is not a place to go with a large group if you can’t secure a reservation, especially not in the middle of winter. Its cozy atmosphere–the tables are close but the place seats maybe 40 people tops– paired with the soothing dim lighting and candles on the tables make it a perfect date spot. (I won’t skirt around the issue: Want to take me out on a date? Take me to the Clinton Street Baking Company and in all likelihood I’ll consider it a successful date, barring some sort of disaster like pancakes catching on fire.)
After dinner we walked two doors down to the Dessert Truck. Don’t be confused by the name, this is a small cafe and not a truck. (See Sylvia’s review for an explanation.) The place has all of its dessert offerings listed on a large chalkboard on one wall; lining the opposite wall are a couple of small tables. Tempting as the dessert choices seemed, I was, alas, too full from dinner to enjoy a dessert of my own. Fortunately Pat was in a sharing mood so I was able to get in a couple of spoonfuls of his creme brulee, which was indeed tasty and creamy, although something about creme brulee served in a tin foil cup was a little anticlimactic. I also thought that the creme beneath the brulee was a bit too cold. But hey, I didn’t put down any money for dessert and it was a relaxing way to end our Friday evening.
Pancakes for Dinner -OR- Fried chicken for Breakfast.
Since this was an odd Westchester Breakfast Club meeting, at 8pm to have breakfast food for dinner (and in Manhattan instead of Westchester), I opted for dinner food for breakfast. It’ll make sense if you don’t think about it too much.
The fried chicken was delicious. The most important part of the chicken, the skin, was fried perfectly and lightly seasoned. The actual chicken meat was a little tougher than I had hoped for. The fried chicken was served with jalapeño corn bread. I could not taste any spice on the corn bread and it was a little dry.
While the food here is good, the wait times are too long. The place is rather small, leading to a long wait to be seated and an even longer wait for the food. All the food managed to come out at the same time and at the correct temperature, but it took, like, an hour. It honestly should not take an hour to cook up some pancakes and fried chicken.
What I Had: Blueberry Pancakes, Sugar-Cured Bacon, cider with booze in it
What it Cost: ~30 all told
Worth It: Not this time
The Rating: 2.5/5
The Details: I’d had a hankering for pancakes for a few weeks when the Tsar (or whoever) let us know about Pancake Month at Clinton Street Baking Company. Remembering the glory of our first visit, I salivated at the thought of a return. Would the two hour wait in the cold be as worth it as it was the first time?
No. The answer is no.
The main meal, the pancakes, were about as good as I remembered, but the details were all lost. The sugar-cured bacon barely seemed to have any sugar at all, and was leaps and bounds from the taste sensation I remember experiencing the first time. The wait was long and cold, and the boozy apple cider I ordered when I arrived was not enough to cure the chills. The servers seemed apologetic for our wait, but that hardly made up for it. I waited too long and paid too much for food that, aside from the pancakes, was barely better than eh.
The Bottom Line: I had the same food I got the first time I came here. This time it was much worse.
Clinton Street Baking Company is a tiny little breakfast spot in the Lower East Side near Houston St. If you are a breakfast person who perhaps is morning-challenged like myself, you are in luck as this place serves breakfast all day. Think Denny’s, except the food is homemade, it’s tiny, it’s in NYC, the menu is not the same, it’s not cheap, and I doubt this would happen!
Ok, so it is absolutely nothing like Denny’s. But it does serve pancakes for dinner.
After a lengthy wait, we sat at a table towards the side of the restaurant and started our order with drinks and a few appetizers. The Buttered cider with Maple Butter sounded interesting, so I gave it a go. The cider by itself was tasty if not all that unique. It tasted like warmed apple juice with a (surprise!) buttery taste. The maple flavor seemed to be missing. With rum, the maple flavor seemed to come out a bit more. The large biscuits that were served in lieu of bread were excellent. They were very fresh. The potato skins we ordered were, in contrast, bland and lukewarm.
You would think that reviewing a breakfast place would involve getting some sort of breakfast food like an omelette or pancakes. However, I had been craving KFC for the prior day and a half, mostly because there isn’t a KFC within walking distance of my apartment. This caused me to make the curveball decision to avoid my breakfast go to, the ham and cheese omelette, and hit up the fat man equivalent of crack cocaine, fried chicken. The chicken was crisp, moist, and surprisingly, not all that greasy. A Tabasco-honey sauce was given for dipping the chicken, but I had trouble tasting any peppery flavor. The sides included cole slaw and jalapeno cornbread. The slaw was relatively bland. It was light on mayo, which is typically a good thing for me, but it didn’t have much of a pickled flavor and the sweetness of the dressing overpowered any other flavors. The cornbread on the other hand was great. Again, the spiciness of the jalapeno didn’t come through very strongly, but the fact that the bread was warm, moist, and had fresh kernels of corn embedded into each bite made it the best part of the meal.
The strengths of Clinton Street Baking Company are (surprise!) their bready, baked goods. While their potato skins, drinks, and sides were mediocre, the biscuits, fried chicken, and cornbread were excellent and most importantly, tasted fresh. Most of the time when you go to a bakery or any establishment with baking on premises, they do all their baking in the morning and by the evening you are left with half stale, rewarmed goods. I imagine that with the sort of business Clinton Street Baking Company does every day, nothing they make sits out for too long. However, that being said, I can’t say I was in love with my meal, at least going there for dinner. It seems that most of their recipes tend toward a more mild, blander flavor that may fit with the country-style cooking theme they are going for, but for the price point ($20-$30/per person), I expected the food to be outstanding and not ‘meh’. I did hear high praise for the sugar cured bacon and since it was pancake month, I probably should have bucked my instinct and went for the pancakes.
The Case: The Clinton Street Baking Company v. The Westchester Breakfast Club
The Venue: New York’s Lower East Side
The Facts: I had the special Japanese Pumpkin Pancakes with a side of bacon. Though they were good, I found myself wishing I had ordered the fried chicken. That intuition was confirmed when I vultured a piece from Jeff.
The Reasoning: This is now the third time I have been to the CSBC. The first was when the WBC last came here, in early 2010. The next was about a week later, when I was trying to impress a girl who asked if I knew anywhere that had really good pancakes. And the third was last Friday, when the WBC (and several guest stars) returned for a late dinner.
It is funny how very slight variations between experiences can change one’s perceptions of and reactions to those experiences. For example, all three times I have gone to the CSBC, it was cold, and there was some waiting outside involved. All three times I have gotten pancakes, a side of bacon, and hot chocolate. But despite all this sameness, while after the first two visits I felt myself eager to return, had dinner on Friday been my only experience at CSBC, I’m not sure I’d return.
Perhaps, as I discussed in my Rye Ridge Deli post, nostalgia warped my perspective on how much I liked CSBC the first two times, but the evidence would seem to refute that conclusion. First of all, I went back a week after my first visit, with strong incentive to pick some place good. Also, the WBC archives provide fairly strong proof that my immediate reaction was wildly positive.
Therefore, there must have been significant actual differences between my experiences one year and my experience the next. Or, rather, a signficant number of perhaps independently insignificant differences. For example, I liked the Japanese Pumpkin Pancakes, but not as much as I liked the blueberry pancakes. Likewise, the bacon this time was tasty, but not the orgiastic experience the sugar cured bacon provided a year ago.
I must also factor in my own circumstances. While last year I was happily unemployed, this year I was … Employed. Rather than being an eventful break from my otherwise leisurely life, last Friday’s visit came immediately after work–I was still in my suit and uncomfortable dress shoes–and I was in a much less serene state of mind.
The Verdict: It must be tough to be a restauranteur. In addition to having to give people good food, good service, and a reasonable price, you also have to contend with whether they came in comfortable shoes.
It’s pancake month at Clinton Street Baking Company! The WBC took advantage of Pancake Month last year with great success, and we made the decision to return for dinner so that the entire club could partake.
Pancakes for dinner is a great thing. Despite the large party size, the failed attempt to secure a reservation, traffic, circling the Lower East Side for parking, and chilly wintery temperatures outside, we all made it through the 1.5 hour wait and were greatly rewarded. The pancake of the day for today was Japanese Pumpkin Pancakes. It was mine!
All the food was delicious. The starter plates of biscuit quarters were awesome and so warm. The potato skins we ordered were pretty good. Thin cut enough so that it didn’t taste like it was too much potato, but just enough so they weren’t just fries.
Unfortunately, the hot chocolate I ordered to warm my bones was only warm chocolate with lots of whipped cream.
The pancakes were worth the wait. Regular pancakes topped with a delicious brown sugar crumble and toasted pumpkin seeds, served with a dollop of pureed pumpkin and the incredible maple butter. The pancakes, as always, were moist, fluffy, and a pure delight. The crumble topping and the maple butter sweetened each bite just perfectly. The toasted pumpkin seeds added a very lovely crunchy texture.
Each bite was worth every single calorie.
They were a bit pricy for a stack of three pancakes. But where else are you going to get pancakes of this nature? Not at the Ihop, that’s for sure.
After dinner, I decided we should diversify for our dessert options. Two stores down was The Dessert Truck Works. For a quick primer, back in the day, a few years ago, when the food trucks first came into vogue, there was one called the Dessert Truck. They frequently parked right next to The Cooper Union. Unfortunately, I only visited them once while I was in college before they lost their mobile food vendor license. But they have now set up shop right on Clinton Street, much to my delight. The one dessert offering they had that night that caught my eye was the goat cheese cheesecake. It was served with a generous swirl of honey and some blackberries. Let me tell you, if you like goat cheese, this is the dessert for you! It was creamy and had that goat cheese tang to it, which was nicely tempered by the honey and blackberries. It was rather unusual, but very enjoyable.
The czar says:
Clinton Street, I am so glad I do not live nearby, otherwise I’d be huge and poor. At least this way I have something to look forward to every February as we are passing through the thick of winter. I will be back!
Dessert Truck, I will be back to try that Honey-Rosemary Ice Cream. No question about it.
This was the second time I went to Clinton Street Bakery and I must say it continued to impress me. The first time I went was for brunch; this time it was for dinner. My meal consisted of the Buttermilk Fried Chicken, which was delicious. However, I will not be commenting on the dinner meal since other WBC members had the same dish. Instead, I shall be commenting on the cake that I ordered that night and ate Sunday night.
Aside from the grand brunches and the delicious dinner offerings, Clinton Street Bakery also takes orders for cakes and pies. Note that they request you place your order 48hrs in advance. I decided to order a Strawberry Layer Cake for my daddy’s birthday. It was a 3 layer 10″ cake stuffed with sliced strawberries and vannila buttercream between each layer, and topped off with vanilla buttercream all over the cake. Overall, the cake was amazing. Even through an hour’s worth of public transportation from the bakery to my house, the cake remained moist as ever. The only part my family members did not like was the frosting being too sweet. I must admit, eating the frosting alone is crazy sweet but having it with the cake balances it out quite nicely.
Clinton Street Bakery is a must-go place to munch in. I would like to thank the WBC for allowing me to join them, “inappropriate conversation over the dinner table” and all.
Back to the top!
Jeffrey
I apologize for my lack of a review. I was there, but i had a really bad set of headaches and was unable to eat to food. When i ate it the next day, the fried chicken was really good. My meal came with a biscuit. It was all very good. I’d go back.
Rumana
March 6, 2011 at 3:20 pm
Visited the Clinton Street Baking Company on Jeff’s recommendation. We had some raspberry almond pancakes and the fish tacos – AMAZING. Their sweet potato fries and horseradish mashed potatoes were good, too. I’d definitely go back.