BenGable Savories

Bakery goods star at BenGable Savories: quiches and frittatas, loaf cakes and scones, pot pies and tarts, and melt-in-the-mouth crème fraiche biscuits with crusty edge and fluffy insides. The biscuits are served warm with fresh fruit jam and premium butter from local dairies. In fact, nearly all of the provender is local: fruits and vegetables in season, eggs and cream from nearby farms. Baguettes used for many of the sandwiches are not local, though. They come from Tribeca Oven, which started in New York and is now in New Jersey. They are chewy, crusty, full-flavored and just about as good as a baguette can be.

I especially like this bread when wrapped around salami, roasted fennel, arugula pesto, and orange aioli: a tremendously satisfying sandwich. Slices of good sourdough are the right thing for BenGable’s fine turkey sandwich, in which thick slices of bird are dressed with a layer of pimento cheese and crisp bread-and-butter pickles. A whole other kind of sandwich is this kitchen’s croque monsieur: ham and gruyere cheese on peasant bread, dipped in egg and baked until the outside is brittle and the ingredients have melded together and become as tender as savory custard. When you slice through the crust, the very aroma of this sandwich is intoxicating. Add a fried egg on top and it becomes a croque madame.

Given BenGable’s focus on bakery triumphs, it’s not surprising that breakfast is a good time to eat here. Stumptown coffee is featured on the menu, available regular, espresso, or cold-brewed. Aside from a sour cherry scone and blueberry corn bread, my favorite thing to eat is a simple length of toasted baguette, available in a few ways. You can have it plainly buttered with good jam on the side; you can have it buttered and salted and drizzled with honey – a devastating sweet-salty powerhouse; and you can have it buttered and lightly salted and spread with a slick emulsion of dark, barely sweet chocolate. The mix of bread and butter and chocolate pinged with salt is at once elegant and overwhelming.