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Lunch for One: Bakeri

Posted by Kathy YL Chan, August 26, 2009 at 1:15 PM

Editor's note: In "Lunch for One," Kathy YL Chan will seek out some of the best places for solo lunchers to grab a noontime bite.

Let's meet for coffee, let's meet for dinner, let's even meet for breakfast. But lunch? Lunch, I like to save for myself. There's something incredibly pleasant about stealing away a single hour in the afternoon for a lunch alone. It's a time to reorganize your thoughts, cool down from a hectic morning—and most importantly, eat deliciously.

At Bakeri in Williamsburg, there's certainly space to think and relax. Come for a wooden table facing a calm street, come for the soothing scent of fresh pastries. But as far as eating deliciously goes, I had much higher hopes.

Lunch is served from 11:00 am on, and features a menu of six sandwiches (all on house-baked bread) along with a trio of salads. Straightforward and nothing ambitious. I debated between the Salvatore Brooklyn ricotta tartine with spiced honey, on date-walnut bread, and the soppressata, mozzarella and shallots on baguette, but finally went with the roast beef paired with horseradish chive aioli on house brioche ($9).

The sandwich was delivered on a round wooden board, accompanied by cups of chips and pickled vegetables. Chips were standard, but I downed the pickled vegetables, a tangle of carrots, cucumbers, and eggplant, in a quick minute. Bright and tangy, it was by far the best part of the meal, clean and crisp on a muggy afternoon.

The sandwich was another matter. It went wrong at the brioche, a creature more bready than buttery and unpleasantly heavy, overwhelming everything from the very decent roast beef to a lovely aioli. Thinly sliced white bread would be a significantly better option.

Post-sandwich, I perused the bakery counter. Bakeri, as the name implies, offers a huge number of baked desserts. I eyed a golden selection of cookies, bread pudding, and croissants, but in the end it was the Chipwich ($5), advertised on the chalkboard as a "special," that won my heart.

Chipwiches are pre-made and come in just one combination, vanilla on chocolate chip cookies. The chipwich came pre-wrapped, and was slipped into a wax bag stamped with the Bakeri logo. Rustic.

The vanilla ice cream is housemade, creamy and mild. The cookies are actually bars, chocolate chip cookie batter baked in a large pan and cut to rectangular slices. And the "chips" are not chips but shards of chocolate—which works to their advantage, a la Jacques Torres and City Bakery.

The ice cream to cookie ratio was severely off; they need to double the ice cream and halve the thickness of the cookie bars. This wouldn't make it onto our Top 10 Ice Cream Sandwich list, but it'll do in a pinch. Especially when you're already here and craving a cold sweet.

Lunch for one? Great for a first try, but it's doubtful I'd return if I didn't work nearby. Service is friendly and a bit too laid back; everyone who strolled in and out during my visit seemed to be a friends or relative of the owners. Local, indeed.

Bakeri

150 Wythe Avenue, Brooklyn NY 11211(map)
718-388-8037
www.BakeriBrooklyn.com

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Tags: Bakeri, bakeries, Brooklyn, ice cream sandwiches, lunch, Lunch for One, Williamsburg