Fatty 'Cue

Oh, brunch.  The beautiful meal for beautiful weekends when the weather is finally warming up and the skies are sunny and blue and the snow from yesterday's storm is melting away.  A meal that is supposed to be a hybrid of breakfast and lunch foods but can be eaten even into the late afternoon before spending the rest of the day wandering and discovering the city's great treasures.

This weekend, we had a lovely brunch at Fatty 'Cue with a group of friends.  I've heard a lot of good things about Zac Pelacchio's Fatty Crew, which includes Fatty 'Cue and Fatty Crab, both located in the West Village.  How I'm guessing the story goes: American Chef goes to Asia, has an gastronomic epiphany, goes back to America to cook fusion Asian food for hipster New Yorkers.  Anyway, I'm very thankful for whoever persuaded Chef Pelacchio to make his sojourn because I loved Fatty 'Cue and I can't wait to visit its cousin Fatty Crab.

When we first arrived at 'Cue, it was mostly empty and we had a nice spacious table for eight.  The upbeat waiter explained the brunch menu and the Drunk Brunch menu (unlimited brunch cocktails for $15).  Many more people trickled in, though, and soon enough the place was loud and busy.  No matter, we received our food and drinks, and with the drinks our volume escalated more and more anyway.

The food arrived with a spectacular aroma.  I found myself gasping and saying, "Oh my God" with every plate that was plunked down before us.  Among our brunch entrees were: the Fatty Lumberjack [the giant try-one-of-everything plate of pancakes, toast, pulled pork or pork ribs, hash browns, coriander bacon (more on this later), and eggs], the brisket sandwich, BLT, and french toast.

The Fatty Lumberjack was a beautiful mammoth of a plate and I had the pleasure, really, of trying a piece of the famous 'Cue coriander bacon.  I am not the hugest fan of bacon usually, but Zac Pelacchio, you have won me over entirely!!!  In fact, I've never been so enthusiastic about bacon ever, nor have I been so excited that I begged the waiter to tell me its ingredients.  The bacon is cut in thick slabs that almost resemble braised pork belly.  It had a good ratio of fat to meat and was super tender that I could cut it with a fork.  The real winner, though, was the coriander sauce on top.  Along with my sometimes-bacon-aversion, I really don't like cilantro or coriander.  This sauce - looked like a pesto so let's call it a pesto - was a complete mouth orgasm.  I only had a tiny bit, but the flavor was explosive and powerful and delicious!  The next time I go to Fatty 'Cue, I shall order the dish that gives me the most amount of coriander bacon possible.

My dish was the brisket sandwich, which was also delicious.  I had a thick, crispy baguette filled with cubes of brisket, smoked cheddar, pickled onions, and cilantro.  It certainly didn't look like the brisket sandwich I had in mind (see: Katz's) but one bite had me swooning.  The meat was juicy and tender (even though the shape of the cubes had me thinking dry meat) and sweet.  This was offset by the spicy hot spices that flavored the brisket.  The melted cheddar added a creamy mellow accent.  Some bites of the sandwich gave way to very fatty globules of brisket, which may sound like a gross thing but were actually guilty indulgences.  Weird as it sounds, I was gazing at my sandwich in between my hands between bites and admiring it, thankful that we had brunch at an awesome place.