We’ve already heard that the long-awaited Grindhaus would be debuting at Cesar Fuentes’s Red Hook Mercado (which has now added a gyro, kebab, and hummus vendor — Baba’s Turkish Grill), but what exactly will it be debuting? First-time restaurateur Erin Norris tells us that she’ll be using a custom sausage from the Meat Hook (“kind of like a weisswurst with green-chile powder in the blend”) and a fryer she’s borrowed from folks at Rockaway Taco to cook up corn dogs (yes, corn dogs) that will have “a spicy kick” rather than being sickly sweet. She also plans to serve “lambpanadas”— lamb empanadas with a “Middle Eastern flare” (they’re served with mint yogurt). “My goal is to take my pasty white ass and hover over a large vat of boiling oil in the heat of the summer, all summer long,” she says. Sounds fun! But what’s going on with the brick-and-mortar store at 275 Van Brundt?
Norris says that among other things, red tape has sprouted from a city requirement that she plant a tree outside of the derelict space she’s been rehabbing. That’s just the beginning of the bureaucratic snafus that run from the Department of Buildings to the State Liquor Authority (“you’d think I was trying to open a 24-hour nightclub for pedophiles next to a kindergarten,” she says). Needless to say, there’s a good possibility Grindhaus won’t be open in time to take full advantage of its back garden. When it does open, the 24-table space will serve beer and wine as well as a menu that will constitute “an international exploration in meat in all its various forms.” Some possibilities: Dutch-style croquettes and a take on chicken-fried steak.
