Simply Sandwiches

Bierkraft (191 5th Ave, Brooklyn, NY, between Union and Berkeley) doesn’t look like anything like a sandwich shop. When you enter, you’re greeted by coolers and shelves filled with beer bottles of every size, shape, color, and alcohol content. Moving on, you hit the taps, from which they’ll sell you a fresh growler. Of beer. Not sandwiches. But then you push ahead (well, if you’re like me you load a shopping basket full of heavy beer bottles and then move on, slowly) and you notice there’s no more beer. There’s a case full of cheese, though, really good cheese. And a case of cured meat. Really good meat, from purveyors like Salumeria Biellese and D’artagnan.

This is where the sandwich seeker strikes gold. They will make you a sandwich with any combination of meat and cheese, with any number of toppings and spreads, for the same price. Want roast Kobe beef? Super-duper aged Manchego? It won’t cost more than 9 bucks. Throw in their laundry list of available toppings (arugula, red onion, avocado, fig spread, premium mustards, chutney, et cetera), and you have a huge variety of possible sandwich combinations. I haven’t picked a bad one yet. And they’re big – the photo below shows only a half sandwich.

They’ve recently started making their own pastrami, and while it’s certainly not Katz’s, I find it pretty addictive when paired with deliciously creamy Bucheron goat cheese and slightly sweet fig paste. The staff is always willing to recommend a good cheese for your chosen meat, and they’ll let you sample before committing to a sandwich. It’s also worth noting that they sometimes run out of their tasty Sullivan Street Bakery bread toward the end of the night, but you can bring in your own and they’ll put a sandwich on it. They will also heckle you (rightfully so) if you don’t get any beer, so stock up on libations to go with your pastrami.

As a bonus, the store sells a variety of incredible ice cream sandwiches, appropriately branded Shameless. Il Laboratorio del Gelato flavors nestle between homemade brownie or blondie cookies, which are made with beer. The cookies are chewy enough to hold the sandwich together, but soft enough to allow (relatively) easy eating – I say relatively because these babies are so huge, it’s hard to take a full bite unless you’re blessed with jaw-unhinging powers.

While customizable, Bierkraft sandwiches scored high in both strategy and execution:

Pastrami, Bucheron goat cheese, fig spread, red onion and arugula:

Dulce de Leche gelato and pecan blondie cookie: