Sundays normally bring brunch to mind for any New Yorker. Sunday in Brooklyn (348 Wythe Ave.) is much more than that. Open daily for brunch, lunch and dinner this tri-level restaurant is like a fashion house of food. At “Sunday” there is creative use of fresh ingredients—even the scraps are utilized in new dishes, drinks and marketplace items. The restaurant opened for dinner in November, rolled out brunch shortly after and opened the marketplace in December. So yes, something good did happen in 2016. The marketplace features a takeout menu and pantry items to make any home chef take their game up a notch. Chef Jaime Young is passionate about sustainability at Sunday: “The marketplace gives us the opportunity to utilize everything that we’re buying…it kind goes with our whole ethos of trying to utilize as much as we can in this restaurant.”
Guests and passers-by alike are welcome to inquire with the host on the latest pantry items for sale in the market. The host will walk you through the selection and ring up your purchase on the spot or add it to your dining bill. The selection includes, but is not limited to an ever changing selection of pickled vegetables, fruits, mustards, and hot sauces. There are no labels to hide away the goodness, but a helpful and knowledgeable staff to answer questions about the contents. First-time visitor KC Schmitz said, “I absolutely love the concept, that they are really trying to ‘use the whole buffalo’ as they say and re-purpose a lot of ingredients that typically get wasted by other restaurants, they either get thrown away or you don’t get to appreciate the full value of every piece of food that comes in and out.”
The marketplace also operates as a coffee shop and shared workspace before dinner service. The menu features sandwiches, salads and sides ranging from light fare (charred avocado toast, $9) to a filling meal (spicy roast beef sandwich, $12), along with both savory and sweet pastries.“I think there’s a lot of people in this neighborhood who are actively looking for a good place to have lunch, sit down and work on their computer,” said chef Young. With Vice Media Headquarters around the corner, he is not wrong in that assumption.
Sustainability is just one facet of an overall approach to food by the crew at Sunday in Brooklyn. The team expects the restaurant to become a fabric of the community and impact the way people see food and cook at home. “We use a lot of components in the marketplace on our menu so if you do like our mustard or you do like our half sour pickles and our hot sauces, you can buy those. For us it’s pretty cool that people can come to eat here [and] can almost heighten their own cooking experience at home; for us that’s super important. I would like to help and influence people to cook at home, and if it’s something that we make here to make their home cooking experience better, I mean, that would be great,” said chef Young.
Don’t expect to find these products in America’s grocery aisles anytime soon, as the ingredients are locally sourced from small farms that could not sustain large-scale mass production. When asked about entering the retail space chef Young answered, “I feel at that at that point you start to lose the care and love that goes into it that makes it delicious. Delicious food requires love and attention, and thought, you know? To have it mass produced takes away from the point. It would have to be on a small scale in order for it to work in a way that really suits our ethos.”
Whether you are in for a cup of coffee, a healthy or hearty start to your day the team as Sunday in Brooklyn hopes that you will take away a meal, a memory and a little bit of Sunday in a jar. “It’s important to us to that we put out a great product and that people understand that real food takes time to prepare and love, for me, personally, philosophically, it’s important,” chef Young said.
Sunday in Brooklyn
348 Wythe Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11249
Brunch / Lunch
Monday – Friday: 11AM-3:30PM
Saturday – Sunday: 10AM-3:30PM
Dinner
Sunday – Thursday: 6PM-11PM
Friday – Saturday: 6PM-12AM
Bar Is Open Late
Magnum Happy Hour: 6PM-7:30PM Weekdays