Defonte's
Deli/Sandwiches
Brooklyn : Red Hook : Columbia & Luquer
I Eat NYC is now a year old. I've been writing about all the things I shove into my face for a full twelve months now, and in that time a lot has changed. I started this project as a sort of writing exercise for myself – I was working freelance and not really getting enough to do. Then I got a full-time job and then another one, all the while my daily food blog started to take the weekends off, then became a thrice weekly blog, then a twice weekly blog and then finally a weekly-unless-I-don't-get-to-it blog.
The job I have now, especially, is all writing, so it's hard to really be stoked on writing more when I get home from work. But I still like this little experiment, even as I increasingly don't have enough time for it. So in its second year, I'll probably update it even less, but I'll try to keep it going.
Another change that happened over the past year is I moved from my beloved Red Hook. This just happened, in fact. It's a very strange set of circumstances that resulted in my needing to relocate – I certainly didn't want to, but I feel like everyone in New York needs some weird housing situation to have the story for later. This place was definitely mine. It was great while it lasted, but it was also obvious from the beginning it couldn't really last.
So I had to leave Red Hook, but I thought for this anniversary it'd be nice if I eulogized my old neighborhood with a post about what is undoubtedly its most famous eatery.
Even though Defonte's was literally right around the corner from my house, I lived in Red Hook for months before I finally ate there. I knew about it from the beginning; Defonte's has earned itself a reputation as a stalwart of old Brooklyn. It's a hold over from a time when Red Hook was still an industry neighborhood, serving the dock workers during their lunch hours.
Today, the industry is gone – the factories have been converted into lofts and the shipping has all moved to New Jersey. But Defonte's remains and its clients are still decidedly blue collar. I'm not really sure where they even come from, but during its esoteric hours, Defonte's is full of the same kind of Brooklyn laborers that have been patronizing it for the past century.
It's those incredibly bizarre hours that led to me living around the corner for months and never going in. It's not that I didn't want to, it's that it always seemed to be closed. Even stranger: the hours aren't even listed anywhere. Not on the building itself (unless it actually is open) and not on the website. You just have to know!
Those hours, by the way, are about nine in the morning to about four in the afternoon, Monday to Saturday. I know; it doesn't make sense to me either. It's a sandwich place that's open for breakfast but not dinner. But it must match the working schedule, because it's always full when it actually is open. And it's no wonder – Defonte's lives up to its reputation.
The sandwiches are pretty big. If you're hungry, you'll happily eat the whole thing, but at about $11 or so, they're reasonably priced for the amount of food you're getting. They're also very good. It's not the best sandwich I've ever had (Syd still reigns supreme in that regard), but the ingredients are fresh and the sandwich is well made. One popular theory around these parts is that Defonte's is the "secret sandwich place in Brooklyn" Liz Lemon refers to in 30 Rock, a hypothesis I fully believe to be true.
Even if it isn't mentioned by name in 30 Rock, Defonte's has gotten some explicit screen time over the years, most notably on Food Network's Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, hosted by the nü-metal leprechaun himself, Guy Fieri.
It's also worth mentioning that there's another Defonte's in Gramercy called Defonte's of Brooklyn. I don't really know what the relationship between the two Defonte's is, and I haven't eaten at the Manhattan location, but I've walked by and, judging from the interior as well as their disparate websites, it doesn't seem like they're exactly the same.
Anyway, the original Defonte's is a nice little slice of a Brooklyn that has mostly disappeared. You get the impression it's been more or less the same for close to a century, which makes it worth trying to get there in its limited window of operations. The fact that the sandwiches are pretty great is a nice bonus.
