Wednesday, July 22, 2009

An Interview with Cody Utzman

READYMADE MAGAZINE click hear or full interview

During the cold days of this past winter, a new store opened on the stretch of Brooklyn’s Nassau Avenue that I walk down every day to get to the subway. I was happy to have a place nearby to get good coffee, and when I first went inside of the new shop, Brooklyn Standard, I became positively fascinated. The store is built on the model of a bodega—the ubiquitous NYC corner store, selling basic groceries and convenience items—but with a heavy vegan/locavore/gourmet strand woven into its DNA. So I stop in for Stumptown coffee, and also for sandwiches that take the the city’s quickie eggs-on-a-roll tradition to new lengths (”The Killer,” for example, is eggs, bacon, cheese, onions, oven-dried cherry tomatoes, mayo and tomato gastrique on grilled foccaccia), and especially to see what’s new. The other day, there were bags of foraged dried morels for sale on the counter, house-made kimchi and dilly beans in glass jars in the fridge. So I was very happy to track down Cody Utzman, a restauranteur and the man who’s brought the Standard’s unique presence to the neighborhood.—KS