Mekelburg's

Mekelburg’s is a small specialty foods store on a residential street in Clinton Hill, and it makes some of the best sandwiches in the city. The porchetta and the duck banh mi are both great, and definitely get a loaded baked potato with toppings like bacon and raclette or cod and caviar. You can sit at the bar and try and try different rare beers, or hang at a picnic table on the outdoor back or sidewalk patios with a group. This place also does great brunch, with the added bonus of rotating frozen cocktails. You know, if you ever wake up on the weekend and think, “Yes, a frozen Painkiller and latke tostada are my only hope.”

Food Rundown

Smoked Black Cod Baked Potato

The salt-baked potato is topped with so much caviar that you’ll assume there’s been some sort of mistake. But there’s no need to wolf it down before anyone notices. Make sure to get the additional hockey puck of briny caviar, which mixes in extravagantly with the creme fraiche, smoked cod, and potato.

Mek & Cheese

It can be hard to stand out in the exceptional world of mac and cheese, but with a charred top covering a liquidy mixture of three cheeses and firm noodles, that’s exactly what this version does.

Smothered Breakfast Burrito

If you’re past needing sustenance and are instead looking for a weekend morning miracle, this is what you want. It’s filled with bacon, scrambled eggs, cheddar, and Hatch green chile crema before getting doused in salsa verde. Also, there are homefries, which are completely unnecessary, but appreciated.

Porchetta Sandwich

If you enjoy porchetta like David Foster Wallace enjoys footnotes, then you should order this huge portion of porchetta topped with what’s essentially crumbled bacon. But besides some very bitter broccoli rabe, it’s relatively one-note, and we prefer other sandwiches here with more interesting flavor combinations.

Latkes

Crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, and just cakey enough to remind you that you aren’t just eating a potato pancake. You can get two latkes for $10 and even if you already ordered something with fries or homefries, we encourage you to add these too. There’s also a latka tostada topped with smoked cod, trout roe, and lox if you really want to go for it.

Nana’s Meatloaf Sandwich

Imagine that bread and ricotta had a lovechild with meatballs and tomato sauce. If they pampered their baby, sent it to the best schools, and dressed it in the finest cheeses - it would grow up to be the fall-apart tender meat in this sandwich.

Chocolate Babka

Mekelburg’s makes great babka. In fact, we’d say it’s some of the best and should be left alone. However, if the thought of babka “tirameksu,” babka poppers, or babka bread pudding already has you googling directions to the Clinton Hill location, by all means.