Brown Butter Craft Bar & Kitchen
Photos courtesy of Brown Butter
There’s no shortage of excellent biscuits in Brooklyn. But the tender, golden biscuits at Brown Butter Craft Bar & Kitchen are the hands-down best in the borough. (Don’t @ us!)
Despite her finesse with flaky layers, owner Myriam Nicolas’s first love is cake. She opened her first business, bakery Brooklyn Baby Cakes, in 2012 after leaving a practical job as a telecommunications engineer.
“There’s a very common story of children of Caribbean immigrants,” says Myriam, 50, who was born in Haiti and moved with her family to Queens at age 10. “You come here, and your parents have these dreams for you — ‘You’re going to be an engineer, a lawyer, a nurse.’ For those of us who want to do something creative, there’s really no path. So you have to create your own.”
Following her passion down the less beaten path paid off. Brooklyn Baby Cakes’ success allowed Myriam to expand in 2017 with Brown Butter, her Bed-Stuy cafe. “But I didn’t want to be a typical cafe with pastries brought in from somewhere else,” she says. “I wanted to develop something we could make in-house every day that’s ours. I thought, ‘Why don’t I do a biscuit and see how that goes?’”
“I’ve always believed that we’re the only ones who can save ourselves. I feel the love and the unity, and it’s a beautiful thing to see.”
“When we first opened, restaurants were on this trend of healthy eating while I’m talking about biscuits and brown butter...so I was a little concerned,” Myriam says with a laugh.
Brown Butter’s initial menu included acai bowls and salads in an attempt to capture a wider audience. “I was kind of surprised that the biscuits took off the way they did. Now our menu is streamlined to where everything is mostly about the biscuits.”
Biscuit breakfast sandwiches with scrambled eggs, cheddar and turkey sausage, or bacon, or avocado mash. Fried chicken biscuits (a weekend special), with or without gravy. Biscuits with hot honey. Biscuits slathered with soft butter and strawberry jam, or plain biscuits topped with nothing at all. No matter how you order this biscuit, it always delivers that perfect bite.
Myriam, whose team bakes all their treats from scratch — a variety of cakes, pies, tarts and bread pudding — spent three months perfecting her recipe for biscuits that are tall, layered, moist and fluffy, but also crispy, with a buttery touch that’s pure decadence. It’s been one of our breakfast faves for years.
If you haven’t already experienced it, Massive, do yourself a favor and get familiar.
Although COVID-19 has restricted the use of Brown Butter’s space (these days, only two customers at a time are allowed inside to order), the cafe was made for kicking back. Warm brick walls are lined with local art, communal tables and cozy corner seats invite you to linger, and a backyard patio offers more room at punchy turquoise picnic tables.
But for now, you can drop in for pick-up, or order for pick-up online at brownbutternyc.com, with delivery options coming soon. Through it all, the cafe has had strong backing from the community.
“The rhetoric is always that Black people don’t support each other, but in reality it’s the complete opposite,” says Myriam, adding that, while she’s enjoyed a surge of new customers in the wake of increased interest in Black-owned businesses, her kinfolk have always held her down.
“Even pre-COVID the support was tremendous, and after, our people have stepped up big-time to keep businesses like mine afloat,” she says. “I’ve always believed that we’re the only ones who can save ourselves. I feel the love and the unity, and it’s a beautiful thing to see.”
413 Tompkins Ave, Brooklyn, 347-683-2116, brownbutternyc.com
