The Great Brooklyn Deviled Egg Roundup
Where Else Can You Get So Many Superior Examples of the Classic Bar Snack?
As far as I’m concerned, the cocktail renaissance saved the deviled egg.
Flashback to 2000. Nobody cared about deviled eggs. Nobody served them. They were retro, and not in a good way. They were what your mother or grandmother served at parties back in the 1960s, the hors d'oeuvre that Betty Crocker recommended. They were gross. They were embarrassing.
Then the mixologists came along. They respected the old ways, the old techniques, the old cocktails, and they made it their business to bring them back. Once their bars were up and thriving, they needed to offer their customers bar food. But they weren’t going to sell the same-old, same-old, the potato skins, mozzarella sticks and loaded nachos found at every sports bar in America. This wasn’t Bennigan’s, for God’s sake. So they reached back into the past for something more refined, something with historical bonafides. They served oysters, good olives, crudités, shishito peppers. But, more than anything, they served deviled eggs. Glorious, beautifully made, and beautiful-to-look-at deviled eggs. They gave the snack the Old-Fashioned cocktail treatment, taking something that seemed old hat and making it exciting again.
Pegu Club—a trailblazer in bar food, just as it was in many areas—had deviled eggs on its food menu when it opened in 2005. A New York Times writer, reviewing the bar, wrote, “Smoked trout deviled eggs? I was suspicious, and then I was smitten. The egg yolk was blended with both a curry mayonnaise and trout smoked with hickory. The hickory registered more strongly than the trout. The dish worked.”
Nine years later, a different food writer at the Times, surveying the cocktail-bar-food landscape, told of “a seemingly endless deluge of deviled eggs. These days, deviled eggs are as de rigueur as artisanal bitters.”
Today, the deviled egg is respectable again. Everyone serves them and patrons don’t even think twice when popping one in their mouth. (For the record, I also give cocktail bars credit for bringing back such things as the shrimp cocktail, wedge salad, tater tots, oyster culture. Fight me, foodies!)
It’s easy to forget who was responsible for that 180. But I haven’t forgotten. My memory is regularly jogged by the fact that I live within walking distance of some of the best deviled eggs in New York City, some served by places that have been making them for more than a decade. And there is ample variety in my cocktail-bar enclave. For—like burgers, pizza and French fries—Deviled Eggs come in many guises and flavors, while all following the same basic format.
The other day, I took advantage of my geographical position and went on a deviled egg crawl.
Clover Club
We hit up Clover Club first. It’s the bar closest to our home and, at this early stage in the game, we were hungry. Clover Club offers what I’d call the Variety Pack of the deviled egg world. You get four halved boiled eggs filled with a mixture of mayonnaise, Dijon mustard, white wine vinegar, house-made hot sauce and a little paprika. But chef Sam Sherman serves each with a different topping: bacon and chive; garlic bread crumb-paprika; curry toasted pistachio; and house made fermented hot sauce. (The price is $10.)
This presents a small problem if you’re sharing the dish, because you want to try all four. As my wife Mary Kate said, “Choose your fighters.” For two people, I would recommend an order apiece.
Each egg has its attractions, but I rather surprised myself by preferring the pistachio, by far the most unusual.
I’ve never thought much about what to drink with Deviled Eggs, which is odd, since I’ve eaten so many of them and always while enjoying a cocktail. So, on this egg expedition, I decided to sound out the bartenders on this unexamined issue. “It’s a savory dish,” said the Clover Club bartender, “so a savory cocktail. I’d say a Bloody Mary.” It was 12:30 pm. A Bloody Mary made sense.
Fort Defiance
You wouldn’t mistake the Deviled Eggs at Fort Defiance for anyone else’s. They are topped with two things I haven’t seen elsewhere, fresh dill and garlic bits that have been cooked to a crisp. And there is quite a bit of each.
Chef Allie Gassaway, who came out of the kitchen to discuss the dish, said the eggs were a riff on her grandmother’s recipe. “She used to use chopped up cornichons in her filling,” she said. “I opt for sweet and spicy pickles chopped into basically a relish. Then they’re topped with capers, chives, an egregious amount of dill, and crispy garlic.”
For $5, you get two egg halves. The satisfying crunch of the garlic informs each bite, and the flavor of the chopped up pickles definitely comes through.
I asked the bartender my pairing question and again was steered in the direction of a Bloody Mary. After trying this pairing twice, however, I began to think that deviled eggs and a Bloody Mary might make for too much acid in one sitting. I would continue my search.
Long Island Bar
I was grateful for the long walk from Fort Defiance to Long Island Bar, as I was beginning to feel a little like Cool Hand Luke at this point. Deviled Eggs look like a quick treat, but they can gang up you pretty quickly.
For many years, the deviled eggs at Long Island Bar have been my Platonic ideal. While many cocktail bars can get too clever by half with their eggs, LIB’s recipe is straightforwardly classical. And again, like Fort Defiance, there’s a family connection!
“It is a very basic recipe involving a house made garlic mayo and Dijon mustard,” said chef Kevin Walker Garrett. “It’s a pretty close approximation of my Aunt Vicky’s recipe, who made them for me all the time as a kid into adulthood.” All these young chefs honoring their elders is enough to make your eyes mist over.
However, there’s been a change in the preparation recently. Owner Toby Cecchini asked Garrett to look in at Turkey & The Wolf on a recent trip to New Orleans and check out the vaunted sandwich shop’s take on the appetizer. “He came back not terribly impressed,” said Cecchini, “and said, ‘Well, they basically do them the same as we do, except they execute them à la minute, whereas we don't.” They are topped with a vinaigrette made from Matouk’s Caribbean hot sauce.
I don’t know if freshly made Deviled Eggs taste markedly different from those prepared beforehand, but the batch we had did seem more piquant than usual. (You get four egg halves for $7, making LIB the deviled egg bargain of the area.)
Behind the bar was Phil Ward, a bartender who never knew an opinion he held back. I asked him my usual gambit: what cocktail pairs best with deviled eggs?
“Nothing pairs with deviled eggs,” he said. “They’re too different, the textures and the flavors. And deviled eggs never stick around for very long, so there’s no reason to pair a drink with them.”
Since all bets were off, I ordered a Gimlet. Then a Sidecar. The eggs didn't object.
Grand Army
Our final stop on our Sunday Brooklyn eggs-travaganza (sorry) was Grand Army. Grand Army has a very good raw bar and its shows in its deviled eggs. Typically, they are topped with trout roe, but sometimes, based on what is in season and available, they use uni and crab.
The filling is made a blend of the yolk, soy sauce, sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, mirin and sake. A scallion is placed in the egg white cup before the mixture is piped into the cup. Then the eggs are sprinkled with togarashi.
I’ve had these eggs before, but we were lucky enough to come on a day when they were out of trout roe, so we got the blue crab topping instead, which was delicious. I may specifically ask for blue crab from now on. (You get three egg halves for $14. I would guess the higher price has to do with the seafood involved.)
Grand Army has a cocktail menu now that is based on the Spice Girls. I asked which of the new drinks would go best with the eggs and was told Girl Power, which is made of pisco, aquavit, manzanilla sherry, pineapple, strawberry, and lemon.
Did the two marry well? Yes, no, I don’t know. By the end of the egg tour, I had come around to Phil Ward’s thinking. The modern cocktail community loves to promote food-drink pairings. But Deviled Eggs have done just fine on their own for a long time now. Heck, they even predate cocktails. Let’s call deviled eggs and cocktails best friends. No need to make it legal.
Odds and Ends…
If the above four bars aren’t enough for you, I also highly recommend the deviled eggs at La Vara and Katana Kitten… To stay on message, tickets for the 9th Annual Baltimore Deviled Egg Pageant go on sale today! The event, on Sept. 25, will benefit the Baltimore Abortion Fund. Tickets are $15-$60… The Brave Ukraine bar tour, held by Kyiv bartender and bar owner Dmytro Shovkoplias to drum up support for his bar, bar staff and the Ukrainian cause during the ongoing war with Russian, reaches New York today. Katana Kitten will play host to Shovkoplias from 6-9 pm. All proceeds go to aid Ukraine … I wrote something about wine writer Alice Feiring’s Sunday routine for The New York Times… The fine folks behind Popina, the Italian restaurant in on Columbia Street in Brooklyn, are soon opening Gus’ Chop House on the nearby corner of Union and Henry Streets… The kimchi beer cheese at Good Fork Pub has quickly joined the ranks of the best bar food in New York. An instant classic.
Ah, yes, Deviled Eggs. Midwestern classic is similar to the cartoon, but I like to vary the recipe. (Curry and mayo blended together create a wonderful little sauce that can compliment roasted Brussels sprouts, . . . or pork, steak, or chicken, too.)
Think egg white cocktails. Pisco Sour is light enough to not overwhelm the delicate flavours of a deviled egg. If you can find some Gabriel Boudier Mustard Liqueur, that may also be a pairing made in heaven.