(Photo: Jaime Cone)
Next time you feel the need to nosh during a Harmonica Lewinskies concert or while watching Hannibal Buress crush it, Knitting Factory’s new next-door sister restaurant will be on call with a menu full of drinking-friendly options. Or, if you prefer, you can enjoy the more sophisticated dishes offered up at The Federal Bar’s 50-seat dining room. All of which is well and good, but we have to say we’re more captivated with Chef Brendon Doyle’s creative ideas for future food/entertainment amalgamations, particularly one Daniel Day Lewis dinner series that may or may feature a giant communal milkshake, timed for consumption during a certain crucial scene.
We caught up with Doyle yesterday afternoon as he was readying the restaurant for a friends and family dinner. The Federal Bar and the adjacent Knitting Factory will have a symbiotic relationship but retain their own identities, he explained; the menu, for instance, isn’t the same, though all the food comes from his kitchen.
Federal Bar’s offerings include whimsical dishes like the rumaki; the faux Polynesian dish, created in the ’30s and ’40s for cocktail parties, has been melded with a classic chicken and waffles idea. Some of his other picks are the crispy pork rillette and the beef-heart poutine with duck-fat potato, demi-glace and curd. Oh, and his take on the corndog is “super crazy,” he added.
The outdoor patio.
The chef hails from Denver, where he ran several kitchens, and he was formally chef for the roadhouse joint Pork Slope in, you guessed it, Park Slope. He handpicked The Federal Bar’s 14 beers on tap, all of which are from “super small, super crafty breweries,” he said. Nine of the 14 are from the state of New York, and of those nine seven are from Brooklyn. “We’re trying to stay local, to stay small, and all the stuff from outside the state are things we really enjoy, like Finch is from Chicago,” he said.
If you prefer a cocktail, bartender Abbra Sherp (also from Denver) has your “simple, approachable” drinks like the The Infidelity, which she said is not for the faint of heart due to its use of an entire egg, which lends an extra smooth, buttery texture to the combination of tart cherry liquor, lemon juice and mezcal.
As for that Daniel Day Lewis fest with its climatic dairy beverage? That’s the dream, said Doyle. “I think it would just end with one shared milkshake that everyone drinks from with straws,” he said with a laugh, adding that it all rides on figuring out a way to convince everyone to share the same shake. “Eating is about friends and gathering together,” he said. “Music and art and food get along quite well, so for me the more aspects of those I can get into a meal, the better the meal is going to be. I also want to pair a meal with a live musical performance, which I think would be really fun, too.”
The Federal Bar, 367 Metropolitan Ave., Williamsburg, 347-987-4025; opens for dinner this Friday, lunch service begins this Wednesday. Brunch service begins Saturday, June 27. Regular hours are: Weekdays and Sundays 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m., Saturdays 11:30 to midnight. View the full menu here.
