378 Metropolitan Ave
(718) 387-4777
Tues-Sun 8am-8pm
Mon closed
By Mary Yeung & Photos by Eric Ryan Anderson
I’m a fan of chef Caroline Fidanza’s cooking. When she was working at Marlow & Sons, I would saunter over just to check out all the wonderful new dishes that would appear on the menu. Her sandwiches and baked goods are always very well thought out, and when she opened Saltie last month with two other chefs, Elizabeth Schula and Rebecca Collerton, I knew the neighborhood was in for a real treat.
Although there is a nautical theme in the shop’s décor (white and blue) and in the names of the dishes (The Captain’s Daughter, Scuttlebutt…), seafood is not the shop’s main focus. It’s a quaint sandwich shop and a bakery that offers unexpected flavors. There are intriguing sandwiches, salads, some unusual baked goods and homemade ice cream. And for all dishes both sweet and savory, gourmet salt is the not-so-secret ingredient.
“We don’t care for very sweet food,” says Fidanza. “We just want to serve food we love to eat. It just makes perfect sense to sell savory dishes in New York. I’m surprised there are not more shops like this.”
The menu is small, but everything is lovingly prepared. Saltie is a great place to sample all the sandwiches you’ve read about in some arcane gourmet magazine but never tried because you couldn’t find a good canned sardine, or you didn’t have the best olive oil, or you didn’t know where to buy the imported capers. The Captain’s Daughter, for example, is a sandwich made of pickled eggs, sardines, salsa verde and home baked Focaccia. All the ingredients come together beautifully. Another terrific sandwich is the Spanish Armada, which pairs potato tortilla with marinated roasted red peppers on a focaccia. Thanks to the well-seasoned ingredients, both sandwiches were savory and delicious. I promise you, you’re not going to miss the meat.
From the baked goods section, I fell in love with the olive oil cake, which is seasoned with chunks of coarse salt that really heightens the flavor of the olive oil; the cake became as addictive as fresh potato chips, only better tasting. The ricotta cake has a rich, milky texture, a nice twist on the old-fashioned pound cake. The homemade ice cream was laced with a sweet and salty caramel sauce. It’s quite sweet, but you’re not likely to forget the roasted caramel flavor. Other intriguing dishes on the menu include a Concord grape goat cheese tart.
