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If you thought “The Bronx is Burning,” only meant something bad, think again as we welcome the team behind Bronx Hot Sauce for an educational (and spicy) panel at our Saturday Salon Series this coming Saturday (April 16th) at 1PM.

Coming on the heels of hosting the judging competition for the annual Screaming MiMi Awards, we’ll be talking to pepper farmers and local hot sauce makers at this ticketed event ($10 in advance here, or $15 at the door – includes all programming and hot sauce samples; additional food/beverages available for purchase).

Expected to be on this week’s panel:

• Kira Kinney of Evolutionary Organics in New Paltz (who also sells at the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket on Saturdays) and who was recently featured in a Serious Eats article
• Lorrie Clevenger from Rise and Root who grows pepper sets for Bronx Hot Sauce
• John Crotty, hot sauce maker for Small Axe (who also sources peppers from Rise and Root)
• King Phojanakong, the master chef has created the hot sauce recipe for Small Axe (and of course our themed kitchen of the past year)

The Bronx Hot Sauce is a partnership among GrowNYC, Chef King Phojanakong and Small Axe Peppers. This collaboration was forged from the shared belief that the Bronx is a wonderful place capable of producing wonderful things. Small Axe is the manufacturer of Bronx Hot Sauce.  Their peppers come from plants grown by Rise and Root. Local community gardens grow the peppers, and Small Axe buys them through the wholesale market and using King’s recipe makes the hot sauce marketed at the GrowNYC Greenmarkets and some retail outlets as Bronx Hot Sauce.

This buy-back model not only helps keep production local, it also provides direct support to the community gardens and gardeners. So come out this Saturday and meet the Hot Sauce Makers. And be sure to join us later this month in Brooklyn at the 4th Annual NYC Hot Sauce Expo.

It’s our favorite month as April Sours returns! We always have a great list of sour beers, but April feels like a time to celebrate the delicate flavor profiles of lambics, geuzes, goses and saisons! And what do we like to pair with our sours? Why, our amazing Adobo chicken (it’ll melt in your mouth!).  It’s our beer selection that keeps us on many of the city’s short lists of Best Beer Bars, and we hope to tempt you with a couple different sour beer events later this month:

• On Wednesday, April 27th, we’ll be welcoming Mike Siegel of Goose Island for an April Sours Beer Dinner (get tickets here) with four great beers paired to dishes like vegetarian Lumpia spring rolls, Duck Confit Banh Mi salad, pork or chicken Adobo and Banana Bread Pudding (with a Stout Caramel Sauce)
• On Saturday, April 30th, it’s our annual April Sours event with 30+ beers and food in a three-hour walk-around tasting (get your tickets here)

We’re also very excited about the emerging NY State cider scene and we’ll have several ciders in rotation on draft in addition to our regular extensive cider menu:

• Brooklyn Cider House’s Kinda Dry Cider – this local cidery (opening soon in Bushwick) has an orchard up in New Paltz and is making Basque-style sour ciders
• Indian Ladder Farm (currently we have the Perry on draft) – the orchard outside of Albany is also growing hops that are being sourced in beers made by Other Half and Threes
• Original Sin will be doing their new NY Cider can launch with us later this month

Ciders will be a key part of our drinks menu and off-site programming throughout the summer.

And if you’re hankering for spirits, be sure to drop in this evening (Wednesday, April 6) for a Mezcal sampling and try our signature cocktail of the week, a Bruxo Mezcal Smokey Pineapple Punch

Whether it’s sours or ciders, we’re puckering up this April!

We are very excited that our “Best Burger” is among the 10 burgers First We Feast thinks are the city’s most underrated. We’re only underrated until you try it! Made from a custom grind at Fleisher’s Craft Butchery, our grass-fed beef is a marvel to eat! While it pairs well with beer or a cocktail, our favorite libation with our burger is wine! And this week we’re featuring the Shinn Estate Winery from the North Fork of Long Island. We have it available by the glass, and we invite you to try it with our menu staple.

Speaking of Long Island, we have a couple great beers from there on draft this week: Barrier Brewing’s Money IPA and the St. James Wit bier (perfect for spring). And upcoming later this month is our annual April Sours, featuring 30 beers plus food in a three-hour walk-around tasting (get your tickets before we sell out!).

And this month we welcome The Chefs Collaborative to NYC (they’ll be joining us April 10-12 at nearby NYU). We’ll be hosting break-out sessions plus being the “unofficial clubhouse” for the chefs when they need a place to hang out and chill.

Maybe they’ll try the burger!

 

This week, we’re focusing on a unique group of brewers who are also making distilled spirits from their beers, and you can join us tomorrow (Wednesday, March 23rd) for “More than a Beer and a Shot” where you’ll sample five different beer-spirit pairings curated by George Flickinger of B. United Imports.  Expected pairings for the evening:

• Aventinus spirit and Aventinus beer – Edelster aged in whiskey barrels
• Schlenkerla spirit and beer (rauchbier)
• Uerige (alt bier) spirit and beer
• Reissdorf Kolsch spirit and beer
• Hitachino spirit and beer – distilled Hitachino White ale aged in white oak barrels

Be sure to get your ticket ($35) here.

And if you prefer beer with a pork chaser, be sure to drop by on Thursday (March 24th) for our “Pig and Belgians Last Supper,” a five-beer pairing dinner featuring a whole roast pig! (Tickets are available here.) Artisanal Imports and co-host Alex Forbes will curate the beers (subject to last minute change):

It’s a great double feature this week as we celebrate a new menu item: The Duck Bahn Mi. Recently profiled in Chopsticks & Marrow, our Bahn Mi takes everything you love from the Asian dish and makes it uniquely “Jimmy’s No. 43.” And this Thursday, we’ll be doing special pairings with some great Ciders of Spain. We’ll be pouring Avalon from Asturias, a region that was actually settled by the Celts. We’ll be having a wee l’il Santo Patricio celebration with pay-as-you-go sidra by the glass. These ciders pair amazingly well with the new duck dish.

And speaking of duck dishes, this Sunday is our annual Duck-Off benefiting Slow Food NYC. Get ready for Duck Confit, Peking Duck, Duck Tacos, Duck Ragu, Duck TagineIs and more! With duck sourced from Hudson Valley Duck Farm, chefs  will deliver a dozen delectable, duck dishes for eaters’ delight and  will serve up delicious duck charcuterie!

So be sure to drop by this week and try a new signature dish just in time for spring.