Mast Brothers Chocolate

Garance Dore

2012-02-09T09:12:00.007-05:00

"I bought one, had a taste, and really, the blend of chocolate, salt and almond made me fall head over heels."

The Huffington Post

2012-02-07T09:46:00.004-05:00

Love At Mast: Murray's Debuts Chocolate-Infused Cheese For Valentine's Day

"they're much more affordable than diamonds."

Full Article

GQ France

2012-01-24T10:51:00.006-05:00

BIENVENUE DANS LE NEO-BROOKLYN

By Claire Levenson, Photos by Gentl & Hyers

Vogue Brazil

2011-11-30T12:50:00.007-05:00

Chocolate No Sangue

By Ana Strumpf

The New York Times

2011-11-29T14:53:00.004-05:00

The Agony of Gift-Giving in a City That Has Seen It All

By Ginia Bellafante

Not far away, at Mast Brothers, a maker of what it calls craft chocolates, I got the sense that the owners believed craft chocolates were no longer enough. I was told that pastries were now being made on the premises by “a renowned pastry chef from Finland.” Handmade satchels were also for sale for $160, made from recycled cocoa bean sacks used in the factory. As the display tag explained: “They have been waxed with organic, unbleached beeswax.”

Full Article

Edible Manhattan

2011-11-25T09:47:00.002-05:00

The Mast Brothers Add 3,000 Square Feet, a Test Kitchen, Tours and a Pastry Chef

By Rachel Wharton

The topic of our weekly NY1 show is just what you need after yesterday’s binge: dark chocolate. We took a trip to Mast Brothers Chocolates in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where the siblings behind the city’s first true bean-to-bar operation have just expanded their factory by 3,000 square feet and hired Finnish pastry chef Vesa Parviainen to run their new test kitchen.

Parviainen’s now responsible for turning their intensely flavored single origin chocolates–they’re all at least 70 percent cacao—into a range of sweets that reflect the terroir of the brothers’ respective bars. (Our favorite last week? A shortbread wafer sandwich held together by a ganache made from their super smoky Papua New Guinea bar.

The segment was of course inspired by the cover story in the current issue of our sister magazine Edible Brooklyn, where a photographer tailed the brothers Mast on a boat trip to buy beans from a cooperative in the Dominican Republic. You can see those beans being made into Conacado bars at the lovely shop in our NY1 piece (which airs today and again on Sunday; you can also watch it online here) or in person if you take the new tour of the expanded factory. Just don’t try to go today; they’re closed today for the Thanksgiving holiday. Hey, even Williamsburg Willy Wonkas need a break every now and again.

Full Article

Edible Brooklyn

2011-09-30T09:58:00.005-04:00

The Mast Brothers Live Up To Their Name

By Gabrielle Langholtz

Brooklyn's most celebrated chocolatiers set sail. It’s only five years since brothers Rick and Michael Mast began making their life-changing chocolate in a Williamsburg apartment but in that time they’ve become the exemplars of the area’s artisan era. From their DIY process (they were the first bean-to-bar outfit in New York) to their sustainable sourcing standards (they buy direct from small organic cacao farmers whom they regard as fam- ily) to the extraordinary quality of their product (bought by the likes of Dan Barber and Thomas Keller) to their facial hair (which would make President Lincoln envious), the brothers are emblem- atic of the Brooklyn food phenomenon.

Given their postmodern reappropriation of preindustrial processes, we shouldn’t have been surprised when the brothers decided to think outside the shipping container. In an effort to “be oil- free,” they turned to wind power—not by selecting the turbine option on their electricity bill, but by retrofitting a 70-foot cargo ship into a three-masted shipping schooner called the Black Seal, docking off the Dominican Republic and loading up with nearly 20 tons of organic cocoa beans.

Baffled customs agents, accustomed to narcotics-related chicanery, had a few questions, but eventually Captain Eric Loftfield won approval to point the little ship’s prow north toward Brooklyn. after two weeks out on the atlantic, the crew docked in Red Hook and unloaded 400 bags of cocoa, marking the first time such a ship had arrived in a New York port since 1939.

The brothers are working their way through the magic beans, about a year’s supply, and say they’ll soon be back at sea. Within three years they plan to use only wind and sail to transport all their beans, literally shipping boatloads from Central and South america with less energy than it takes to drive a case of turnips down from the Catskills.

Full Article

Artisan Food Discoveries & Business

2011-07-19T10:07:00.005-04:00

Mast Brothers Chocolate Sets Sail on a Chocolate Making Adventure

By Susie Wyshak

A short walk from the L train Bedford Street stop in Brooklyn’s strikingly hip Williamsburg area, you arrive at Mast Brothers‘ small chocolate making “factory.” Meeting their growers and giving tours of their bean-to-bar operation jazzes these two brothers: Rick, a chef and Michael, a film maker.

I had no idea what to expect, and this visit proved how delightful it is when an experience exceeds anything you could have imagined:

1) Rather than drum roasters, they use small convection ovens and roast the organic beans on trays the size of a home cookie sheet. “We can do true roasting profiles and have so much more control over a drum roaster. Everyone here has a master palate. We know it’s ready by taste.”bea

2) An aerospace engineer friend designed and patented a winnowing machine that uses air to remove hulls and grind the beans into nibs. (This clever device has no hallmarks of Rube Goldberg.)

3) A domestic company builds their chocolate-making machines, powered by granite wheels. Their basic chocolate consists simply of cacao beans and organic ugar. Other inclusions like almonds making mast brothers chocolatecome from producers they know personally. The granite wheels macerate and smooth the roasted beans and sugar for several days. With a twist of a knob, they increase pressure to make the chocolate smoother and smoother. When the chocolate is ready–all determined by taste–It sits for 30 days in metal bins to “age,” which is a new-school chocolate-making method popularized by fellow chocolate maker Steve DeVries.

4) Each bar is hand wrapped, with friends coming in during the busy season to lend a hand. In the air-conditioned bar wrapping room, which I imagine makes this the coveted job during summer, photos of the superstar fast wrappers plaster the wall. First gold foil wraps around the freshly molded chocolate bars, then a fancy gift-paper like wrapper, designed by Mast Brothers and printed by Prestone Press in Long Island City. They keep a keg filled with local beer on hand for the chocolate makers (which are all of the employees) to enjoy. “It’s the buddy system,” they explain when I asked if the brewery supplies beer is in trade for chocolate.

5) Next, The Secret Room. Just kidding. They specifically point out they are a completely open door operation with nothing to hide. Although the Oompa Loompas were disguised as hip tattooed Brooklynites.

How to Import Cocoa Beans and Travel to Another Century in 14 Days

Everything Mast Brothers uses is organic and direct trade, purchased directly from producers. The only “certifications” they embrace and need are direct connections to growers. “We consider our growers family. We will also be the first buyers from a new Belize co-operative that our friends started,” says Rick.

They point to a stack of burlap sacks filled with cocoa beans, preparing to transport me to the 19th century. “We chartered a 70-foot schooner to pick 20 metric tons of beans up from the Dominican Republic,” Rick says. He explains the impetus for sailing is that there is nothing local about cocoa. “We figure why not limit our participation in the industrialization of food. The same people who grew the cacao from the La Red co-operative delivered the shipment to the boat.” They thanked their growers with an excellent price and ample beer.

It took 14 days to get the bean-filled schooner back to Brooklyn, with only wind powering the boat. “We learned a lot just bringing it into the Brooklyn port. The city hadn’t played host to a schooner in decades. They were like ‘Why would you do that?’” Once it sunk in, the city agreed it was quite an awesome endeavor. At the port, they inspected the beans and found no problems–making Mast Brothers the first since 1939 to sail cargo into New York City! A few blocks later, the beans landed at Mast Brothers HQ. They aren’t sure if it cost more to transport the beans this way. Hey, lots of people might pay to take such an adventure. (Here’s more about the trip)

In the next couple of months, visitors and locals can enjoy an expanded chocolate making facility with a community center open to passersby to see first-hand how good chocolate is made. Farmer visits, chocolate history talks, and music complete the picture of a community space for the brothers. “Nothing substitutes for people coming in, meeting us, and seeing our place. We want to have a place where people walking by eating ice cream can pop in and discover how chocolate is made.” Good business is FUN.

It’s worth a trip off the beaten path to taste their chocolate where it’s made. “We make every wholesale order on demand. Nothing is sitting in a warehouse.” Visit 105 North 3rd Street (the Bedford L stop) and travel to another time and place to discover Mast Brothers chocolate bars, chips, tablets, cacao nibs, and soon, confections.

What’s next? After I told a beloved candy maker all about the Mast Brothers, she immediately felt a connection. I won’t give it away to them or anyone, but I see great things to come in East Coast confection collaborations through yet another synchronous food connection. Good food is good life!

Full Article & Photos

The New York Times

2011-07-12T14:44:00.004-04:00

Fête Accompli | T Magazine Toasts Edible Selby

By Jane Herman

Last night at Isa, the new built-by-hand Williamsburg, Brooklyn, restaurant owned by Taavo Somer of Freemans Sporting Club fame, a “feast of friends,” as Somer called it, gathered to celebrate the photographer and T Magazine contributor Todd Selby. In the kitchen, some of Selby’s most beloved chef-subjects — Elisabeth Prueitt and Chad Robertson of Tartine in San Francisco, Martin Berg of Mathias Dahlgren in Stockholm, Russell Moore of Camino restaurant in Oakland, CA, and Ignacio Mattos, who will cook at Isa when its doors open later this month — collaborated on a diverse menu of stunning appetizer-size dishes. Guests enjoyed flatbreads lathered with whipped pork lardo, ricotta baked in fig leaves and dressed with an herby cucumber-garlic sauce, toasted king trumpet mushrooms, pork belly served with roasted beets and watercress, and special Mast Brothers chocolate bars wrapped in quirky, Selby-made paper. Aspiring to make Isa, which means “father” in Estonian, a “melting pot of different foods and cultures,” Mattos couldn’t have picked a more fitting christening for his kitchen. Cheers!

Full Article

Wall Street Journal

2011-06-15T13:28:00.004-04:00

Cocoa Arrives, By Sail

By Andrew Grossman

On the Red Hook waterfront next to a container ship carrying 20,000 tons of Ecuadorian bananas, a group of stevedores, sailors and makers of artisanal chocolate spent Tuesday morning unloading 20 tons of cocoa beans out of a 70-foot sailing schooner.

It was the first time a sailing ship had unloaded commercial cargo in New York since 1939, according to one city official.

Two years ago a pair of bearded brothers decided to try importing cocoa for their Williamsburg chocolate factory—which focuses on simple, ecologically friendly sweets—by sail. They hoped it would save energy, help lure environmentally conscious buyers, and, maybe eventually, cost less. Their ship finally came in from the Dominican Republic on Monday night.

"We tend to think of everything as simple as possible," said one of the brothers, Rick Mast. "Why can't you sail it?"

The brothers wanted to get to work unloading right away Monday, but that turned out not to be simple. The piers in Red Hook aren't set up for sailboats, so the deck of the ship was too low for stevedores to safely haul the 150-pound bags of cocoa beans onto dry land. The four-legged rolling behemoths that unload shipping containers, meanwhile, were too large to use. A small crane had to be driven down the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway from Long Island City.

That was how it went for much of the Black Seal's four-week voyage to the Caribbean and back to New York. While sailing ships carrying goods were responsible for much of New York's early development, doing trade that way these days is complicated.

The first problem was finding a cargo ship with sails. Rick and Michael Mast, co-founders of Mast Brothers Chocolate, eventually found the three-masted Black Seal, which Captain Eric Loftfield had spent 25 years building in his Cape Cod lawn as a hobby. Mr. Loftfield spends much of his time piloting ships between Washington and Alaska.

Then they had to figure out where to dock it and unload it. There they had the help of Andrew Genn, the vice president of the New York City Economic Development Corp.'s maritime division. He helped them figure out how to dock the ship at the Red Hook Marine Terminal, in which the city owns a stake.

Once the ship got to New York Harbor, it was slowed down by customs agents who are better acquainted with the mechanics of checking the cargo of giant container ships than small sailboats carrying 20 tons of organic cocoa.

Things were even harder in the Dominican Republic, where officials in the tourist town of Puerto Plata were befuddled by Americans trying to sail away with a cargo hold full of beans.

Rich Falotico, the Mast Brothers' cocoa importer, flew down to help negotiate. He and a representative for the Dominican farmers had to explain to the people running the port, the military and drug-enforcement officers what they were trying to do and that yes, they knew this sort of thing was easier on a big ship with hundreds of metal containers.

"It's a drug route and we've got a sailboat," Mr. Falotico said Tuesday morning on the dock in Red Hook. "It's like: 'What the hell are you guys doing?' "

Eventually the Black Seal departed and made its two-week voyage up the Atlantic Coast to Brooklyn.

Mast Brothers' will turn its cocoa beans into chocolate over the next year. They'll sell it to big-name chefs like Thomas Keller and Dan Barber and in grocery stores like Dean & DeLuca. Mr. Mast estimates that the Black Seal's shipment of cocoa will end up costing 25% to 30% more than usual. But he hopes to repeat the trip again and expects costs to decline as the company make its shipping operation more efficient.

Full Article

Setting Sail

2011-04-30T02:06:00.012-04:00

Members of Mast Brothers Chocolate depart with Captain Eric Loftfield and the crew of the Black Seal to retrieve cocoa beans from the recent harvest in the Dominican Republic.

New York Times

2011-04-05T18:10:00.002-04:00

Who Made Those Chocolate Wrappers?

By Hilary Greenbaum

Photo by Tuukka Koski

The story of Mast Brothers Chocolate is one of family and one of craft. Rick and Michael Mast, the young owners and proprietors of the company, make organic, artisanal sweets in their Brooklyn-based confectionery. They take great care with their ingredients (cacao beans imported directly from South America), their manufacturing process (time-honored techniques alongside custom-built machinery by a former aerospace engineer) and even their packaging.

“We originally just wrapped our chocolate in butcher paper, in hopes of doing anything we could to communicate the message that chocolate is food — not candy,” Rick Mast told me by e-mail. “We soon realized that the packaging needed something more so we tried to retain the feel of butcher paper but with beautifully designed patterns.” Every chocolate bar they create is hand-wrapped in specially designed patterned paper, one pattern for each of their many flavors. Although understated, the packaging, in its simplicity and thoughtfulness, alludes to the nature of the product it contains.

Originally, the papers used for the wrappers were purchased, but as of last year, they’ve all been designed in house by the owners, their crew, family or friends. The packaging pattern shown above was created by Michael, and being that Stumptown Coffee (their collaborator for this flavor) was founded in Portland, Ore., and recently opened a Brooklyn location, the pattern is a tribute to the bicycle culture of both locales. The anchor pattern for their Almond and Sea Salt bar (at right) was designed by Rick. He notes that it “is a play on old fleur-de-lis patterns commonly used by Italian paper makers with a Mast Brothers twist.”

The increasing popularity of the chocolates has inspired artists from around the globe to submit their own patterning designs and ideas for the Mast Brothers to use, but for now, they’ve decided to “keep it in the family.”

Full Article

Crain's

2011-02-06T13:48:00.006-05:00

Gotham Gigs: Cacao like Caviar

By Miriam Kreinin Souccar

About five years ago, Rick and Michael Mast started making chocolate from scratch in their Brooklyn apartment to serve at their big dinner parties. Their friends gushed so over the treats that the brothers—two Iowa boys who moved to New York a decade ago to attend cooking school and film school, respectively—decided to turn the hobby into a day job.

They set up shop in a tiny Greenpoint space in 2007 and began scouring the world for the best cacao beans. Two years ago, they moved their operation to a 2,000-square-foot Williamsburg factory.

The duo invites the public to watch them painstakingly make every bar, each branded by the origin of the beans—using a process that takes 37 days and isn't practiced by any other city chocolatier.

Such precision has earned Rick, 34, and Michael, 31, a growing list of fans. Mast Brothers Chocolate sells to 120 stores and restaurants, mostly in the New York area, and has a waiting list of more than 1,500 worldwide. Even President Barack Obama feasts on its creations. The business, launched with $35,000 in savings, just became profitable, and the Masts are expanding their factory in order to triple production.

The brothers and their 14 employees taste their products all day, but say they never feel sick.

“Our chocolate isn't really a candy,” Rick said. “It's more like caviar.”

Full Article

Brooklyn Botanic Garden

2010-09-28T12:04:00.006-04:00

Chile Pepper Fiesta, Saturday, October 2nd from 12p-6p

Join us and experience New York’s hottest fall tradition with seven bands from chile-loving nations around the world, including Indian bhangra and brass, a Haitian dance fête, and Brooklyn’s own ukulele gals. Sample goodies from today’s hottest chocolatiers and cast your vote at the Chile Chocolate Takedown. Delight in spicy cooking demos by top NYC chefs and enjoy sizzling sauces, pickles, and other red-hot specialties. Don't miss your chance to savor the fiery flavor…Brooklyn style.

For more info

Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture

2010-09-28T11:57:00.006-04:00

7th Annual Harvest Festival, October 2nd from 10a-3p

Festivities will include live music featuring Brady Rymer and the Little Band That Could, a farmers market with delicious food from local purveyors, hayrides around the property, theatrical performances by Story Pirates, workshops on food and farming, our Seasonal Pie Bake-Off, and more!

For more info & to purchase tickets

The Voice Project

2010-09-28T11:36:00.005-04:00

Matt Vasquez of Delta Spirit covering AA Bondy
Filmed at the chocolate factory

Delta Spirit's Matt Vasquez came through town to play a show at Webster Hall with Deer Tick and said he'd be down for doing an episode. We caught up with him and his friends from Mast Brothers Chocolate where everyone was meeting before heading over to the Dr. Dog show on Governors Island. Just looking at their website now, they have this one quote up from Pete Seeger, "I want to turn the clock back to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other." When we first met with the women's groups in Uganda who were doing just that we told them that we wanted to help but also we wanted to spread their message of forgiveness and example of community to the world - these are women living in a true community, caring for each other in the face of some of the hardest circumstances one can imagine. Matt and the boys from Delta Spirit have been long time advocates for peace in Central East Africa and great friends and supporters of Invisible Children, and when we spoke on the phone and talked about the project Matt said absolutely right away, and thought that he'd like to pass it on to his friend AA Bondy. Many thanks to Matt for this impromptu session, to Kenny from IC for hooking us up, Kalim, and everybody at Mast Bros.

VoiceProject.org

Gizmodo

2010-09-23T16:51:00.002-04:00

Inside the Little Chocolate Factory So Good Willy Wonka Would Kill Himself

Interview by Joshua David Stein, Video by Woody Jang

The Mast Brothers make chocolate in NYC. It's one of the very few places that craft bean-to-bar chocolate. It is crazy delicious. With our friends at Eater, we'd like to show you how they make it. And their beards.

A stark contrast to the vast industrial operations of Hershey, Nestle or just any other chocolate company you've ever heard of, they produce around 1,000 bars a day, hand-roasting in a small convection oven, using old school techniques and equipment, like a stone grinder. (With the exception of their winnowing machine, custom-made by a former aerospace engineer. A winnowing machine pulls the shells off the beans before they're ground, essentially.)

While the mega-corporate chocolate industry has looked for ways to make their chocolate even cheaper—going so far as to lobby the FDA so they can replace cocoa butter with vegetable oil and still call it chocolate—the Mast Brothers' chocolate is stripped down and natural. They don't add vanilla (or a chemical version), extra oils or butters, or emulsifiers. What that means is that you can taste the chocolate, and where it comes from—comparing a chocolate from Madagascar to one from Venezuela, you can taste the difference, like the terroir in wine or coffee.

A bar of Mast Brothers chocolate goes for around eight bucks, or you can get taste of it at restaurants like Thomas Keller's Per Se and the French Laundry, or the New York outpost of Blue Bottle Coffee in a mocha. Pricey, but it's worth it, if you love chocolate.

Watch the video

The Scout

2010-07-27T11:15:00.008-04:00

A film by Tom Ran

"It was a little more than a year ago that we embarked on a video series on craftsmanship. Our intention was simple, document the individuals that aspire to create products and services at a higher standard. We chose three different categories to cover. Billykirk, the leather manufacturer, Roman & Williams the interior design and architect firm, and now Mast Brother Chocolate. Oddly enough there was another theme to the series that was unintentional. Each of these small business are bounded by familial ties. The husband and wife team behind Roman & Williams and the brothers from Billykirk and Mast Brothers Chocolate. They are living proof that family can work successfully together."

Click here for the video

The Cooking Channel

2010-07-21T13:29:00.000-04:00

Food(ography) : The Chocolate Episode

Follow the deep, dark path of chocolate from the depths of the rainforest to the back rooms of master chocolatiers. Visit Ultra Marinos where Maricel Presilla will take us back to the earliest Meso-American chocolate beverage or see how Hershey's Kisses have been challenged by Victorian clad blenders at Mast Brothers Chocolate in New York.

Airing:

July 18, 2010 9:00 PM
July 18, 2010 1:00 AM
July 20, 2010 10:00 PM
July 20, 2010 2:00 AM
July 24, 2010 7:00 PM
July 25, 2010 8:00 AM
July 27, 2010 12:00 PM
July 29, 2010 8:00 PM
July 29, 2010 12:00 AM

All times Eastern

Full Summary

New Amsterdam Market

2010-07-21T12:31:00.004-04:00

City of Water Day, Saturday, July 24th

Come join us this Saturday, July 24th (11am-4pm) at the
New Amsterdam Market (Named Best Outdoor Market by New York Magazine).

More Info

The Cooking Channel

2010-06-13T12:35:00.003-04:00

June 13, 2010 9:00 PM
June 13, 2010 1:00 AM
June 15, 2010 10:00 PM
June 15, 2010 2:00 AM
June 17, 2010 8:00 PM
June 17, 2010 12:00 AM
June 19, 2010 7:00 PM
June 20, 2010 8:00 AM
June 22, 2010 12:00 PM

All times Eastern

Full Summary

NY Daily News

2010-05-10T09:38:00.006-04:00

Bill Yosses, White House pastry chef, gets just desserts from CUNY

By Katie Nelson

A New Yorker with the sweetest job in all of Washington is about to get props from his alma mater.

Bill Yosses, of the upper East Side, splits his time between the city and the nation's capital, where he works as head pastry chef for the White House. The job is no piece of cake, he says.

The biggest challenge, he said, is to inject sensible ingredients into his tasty treats.

"The problem for me is, every day is a special occasion at the White House," said Yosses, a New York City College of Technology alum who will be honored by CUNY next week. "So I have to use a lot of willpower to try not to indulge, but it's also about showing that desserts can be part of a healthy lifestyle."

The French-trained chef uses whole-grain flours and swaps maple syrup or honey for sugar. He replaces butter with grape seed, safflower, walnut or pistachio oils. And he often uses fresh berries and herbs from the Obamas' garden when fixing up desserts.

"Moderation and good-sourcing is the core of our philosophy for healthy eating," Yosses, 56, said.

The First Family is a health-conscious clan, despite their affection for fruit-filled pies. Combatting childhood obesity is Michelle Obama's biggest campaign.

So naturally, Yosses is charged with helping the Obamas walk that talk on a daily basis, whether it's an intimate family dinner on the second floor of the White House or a picnic on the South Lawn with 2,000 guests. He's been working at the White House since 2007.

Yosses laid out a spread of cherry-almond and blueberry scones, served with clotted cream and homemade cantaloupe-almond and pear-ginger jams for Friday's Mother's Day Tea for about 140 people, including Michelle Obama and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter

A native of Ohio Yosses said he fell in love with French food and cooking techniques. He moved east and wound up at CUNY, earning a degree in 1982 in hotel management. That led to jobs at top New York restaurants, including The Polo, Montrachet Restaurant, Citarella and the now-shuttered Tavern on the Green.

While he loves his dual life in D.C. and New York, he said the Big Apple will always come first.

"I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings in Washington, but I will always be a New Yorker because there is no place in the world like it," he said.

Yosses prepares crepes topped with a compote of kumquat, pineapple and Tupelo honey; fresh orange segments; an organic artisanal chocolate from Brooklyn's Mast Brothers and a coconut lime sorbet.

Full Article

Cool Hunting

2010-05-04T15:17:00.004-04:00

Cool Hunting Video Presents: Mast Brothers Chocolate

Actual Site

Block Party

2010-04-30T13:56:00.002-04:00

New York Times Magazine

2010-01-28T20:06:00.000-05:00

The Nifty 50 | Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch, Designers and Architects

By Monica Khemsurov

This month, T celebrates the Nifty 50: America’s up-and-coming talent.

If they were considered slightly eccentric before — obsessing over industrial materials, old things and cabinet-of-curiosities-style tableaus while most of their peers were stuck on modernism — 2009 was the year the rest of the world caught up with Roman and Williams. The interiors firm started by the ex-Hollywood set designers Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch banked two of the splashiest New York hotel openings in recent memory, the Standard and the Ace, then unveiled a new 19th-century-style condo building on Elizabeth Street that seemed like a revelation to those who noticed: real brick, laid by bricklayers, making Roman and Williams the Mast Brothers Chocolate of architecture. “It’s almost a ’round two’ for us,” says Standefer, who founded the firm with her husband 10 years ago. “People are getting to see the work now, to see a purer expression of who we are.”

Until now, the pair had done mostly private interiors, including multiple homes for Gwyneth Paltrow and Ben Stiller. But at the Ace Hotel — plus the attached Breslin restaurant and Stumptown coffee shop — they had free rein to geek out on dark wood and salvaged vintage furnishings, playing up the building’s 100-year heritage in a way that seems very now.

Of course, as with anyone who finds themselves suddenly recast as trendsetters, Standefer and Alesch are struggling to hang on to their identity in a way that will transcend what may be just a phase for others, especially as they begin a commission for a 30-story business hotel on 57th Street. “People get opportunities like this and then others say, ‘They were great then, but they grew, and now they’re not so great,’” Standefer says. “We’re meditating on what this means for us. It’s a bellwether of how much things are changing culturally, but as it happens I think we’re going to need to change it up a bit — start making Constructivist spaces that look like Ziggy Stardust.”

Full Article

The Selby

2010-01-20T17:34:00.000-05:00

Full Album

New York Times Magazine

2010-01-04T19:55:00.001-05:00

Now Sipping | Stumptown Mocha

By Christine Muhlke

City Bakery’s 18th annual Hot Chocolate Month is around the corner, but don’t postpone crazy joy. Have a mocha at Stumptown and proceed directly to the next level.

Made with Stumptown’s Hair Bender espresso blend that’s roasted in Red Hook, Mast Brothers chocolate made in Williamsburg and whole milk from Hudson Valley Fresh, it’s the most carefully (and locally) sourced, intricately made drink you can have outside a cocktail bar. I ordered a large, thinking that it would be served in one of the brown cups on top of the espresso machine. Instead the barista grabbed a pint glass while he warmed in a pan of hot water a bottle of Mast Brothers chocolate syrup — a custom blend of fruity Madagascar chocolate and sugar, which the Brooklyn-based brothers are constantly calibrating for the espresso bar based on staff feedback. A healthy dose of the chocolate was added to the glass, followed by a ristretto of espresso (more intense than a double). A bit of cocoa powder capped the liquid, onto which frothy milk was free-poured into a heart shape He sneaked in a squirt of homemade whipped cream while I was looking at the Mast Brothers/Stumptown coffee-chocolate bars on the counter. The result: 16 ounces of winter cheer for $4.50.

If there’s anything nicer than sinking into one of the couches in the adjoining Ace Hotel lobby with a giant, speedy hot chocolate and a slice of caramelized French toast (made at Café Pedlar in Brooklyn) on a snowy morning, please let us know in the comments section.

Full Article

New Amsterdam Market

2009-11-19T11:34:00.003-05:00

Thanksgiving Market Sunday November 22, 2009
South Street, between Beekman Street and Peck Slip
On the East River waterfront in Lower Manhattan
11:00am to 4:00pm

"[New Amsterdam Market is] inspired by history’s most engaging public markets, which bring together commerce, place, and culture. Of special interest are the market district of Les Halles in Paris, whose destruction is now appreciated as a loss to that city and every facet of its society; and the covered market halls of Britain, whose potential for revival has been proven by the recent reinvention and success of London’s Borough Market.

To be comprised of retail and wholesale vendors including butchers, grocers, mongers, farmers and provisioners, bakers and distributors, brokers, importers, and sellers of cooked foods, New Amsterdam Market will follow a local tradition, set by the market halls of old New York. Reaching their last zenith in the early 19th Century, emporia such as Fulton Market, Washington Market and Jefferson Market were lauded for the bounty and quality of their offerings, which attracted visitors from the entire city and far abroad.

Reinvented for our present time and needs, New Amsterdam Market will incubate a new and growing business sector: purveyors who source food directly from farmers and producers whom they trust to be good stewards of our land and waters. Centered in this Region - once called New Netherland - New Amsterdam Market will foster a renewed appreciation for our natural environment and its ongoing potential to nourish. And as true of public markets, New Amsterdam Market will be accessible to all, striving to diminish the economic, social, and educational impediments to sound nutrition.

The democratic and cultural vitality of public markets has long made this civic institution worthy of municipal and philanthropic support."

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Mast Brothers Chocolate: Hootenanny

2009-10-22T13:51:00.007-04:00

October 30th, 31st & November 1st

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Brooklyn Botanic Garden Chili Pepper Fiesta

2009-09-23T13:53:00.004-04:00

Saturday, October 3, 2009 (12p-6:30p)

Join in New York's hottest fall tradition, where the grooves are smokin' and the chile peppers are scorchin'. Enjoy a full afternoon of music and dance from chile-loving regions around the world. Indulge at the Chocolate Chile Cabana, where you can sample goodies, meet some of today's most exciting, red-hot chocolatiers, and cast your vote at the Brooklyn Chile Peppers 'n' Chocolate Takedown. Feel the heat as spicy food specialists and chefs offer sizzling samples, cooking demonstrations, and tasty tips. Don't miss your chance to savor the fiery flavor…Brooklyn style.

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Stone Barns' 6th Annual Harvest Fest

2009-09-23T13:42:00.004-04:00

Saturday, October 3, 2009 (10a-3p)

Harvest Fest is a community celebration of the farm at its most fruitful! Festivities for the whole family will include live music, a farmers market, hayrides and games from 10AM—3PM at Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, located just 45 minutes north of Manhattan.

Highlights of Harvest Fest 2009:

* Live music in the Courtyard featuring Brooklyn, New York’s Astrograss and Edinburgh, Scotland’s Malinky.

* Adult workshops on food and gardening led by farmers, chefs and special guests.

* Children’s workshops on cooking, gardening, bees and honey, kestrals, and more!

* An expanded Farmers Market featuring more than 20 local purveyors with delicious seasonal fare – including Stone Barns Center’s own roast pork sandwiches, organic baked goods, ice cream with homemade toppings, artisan chocolate, craft brewed beer and ale, fresh fruit and cider, and much more!

* Hayrides around the property for visitors of all ages.

* Demonstrations with animals and vegetables in our fields and pastures.

* Performances of Clucky, the Brave Little Hen, an original play by Visible Theatre.

* An opportunity to show off your farmer skills at our Farm Olympics.

* Our sixth annual Seasonal Pie Bake-Off!

Food and beverages will be available for cash purchase all day at the Farmers Market.

Tickets: Adults: $30 ($27 Stone Barns Center members)
Youth age 6-14: $20 ($18 members)
Children age 2-5: $10 ($9 members)

Advance ticket sales open to Stone Barns Center members on August 10. Ticket sales to the general public begin on August 24. As always, members receive a 10% discount on tickets. To purchase tickets online, visit www.stonebarnscenter.org. Tickets purchased by September 26 will be mailed; tickets purchased after September 26 will be held at will-call.

Harvest Fest is presented with generous support from lead sponsor Chipotle Mexican Grill, with support from Whole Foods Market. Media sponsorship by Edible Manhattan and Edible Brooklyn. Beverage sponsorship by Captain Lawrence Brewing Company.

For more information about Harvest Fest 2009, or to learn about Harvest Fest sponsorship opportunities, contact Emily Stevens at 914 366 6200 x152.

Stone Barns Center is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization. All proceeds from Harvest Fest support our farm and education programs.

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The New York Times

2009-09-17T14:01:00.003-04:00

A Seductive Cup

By Oliver Strand

The barista who took my order at Stumptown Coffee Roasters possessed the bone structure of a male model. He was tall and focused and had a tattoo of a schooner on his forearm.

He called me “sir.”

It was a level of ceremony — or even civility — you don’t usually encounter when jockeying for an espresso in New York.

And you don’t usually come across an espresso ($2.50) this exceptional anywhere in the world.

Stumptown, which opened in the Ace Hotel earlier this month, puts a polish on the fanaticism of what’s known as coffee’s “Third Wave.” It’s a movement of purists (no flavorings, please) and obsessives (bags of micro-lot beans are labeled with the latitude, longitude and elevation where grown).

Arguably, this is New York’s first farm-to-cup cafe. Stumptown was started in Portland, Ore., by Duane Sorenson, a legend in coffee circles. The company is known for an intensity that’s part punk, part religion.

But the coffee bar in the Ace Hotel is more about seduction.

It starts with the room. The airy storefront overlooking West 29th Street was designed by Roman and Williams, the firm behind the hotel’s interiors. It’s spare but lush: the floor is travertine, the walnut bar is trimmed in brass. The light fixture, a graceful line of running arcs, is hand-blown milk glass.

Then there’s the natty staff. Dressed in muted shades of gray and blue, they’re professional (the men wear ties), and achingly cool (they look like they skateboard to work).

Most of all there’s the coffee.

The plush and nutty house espresso, Hair Bender, was bright enough to balance the steamed milk in a cappuccino ($3.30) — which, incidentally, is just 10 cents more than what is served at the Starbucks around the corner.

A glass of cold-drip iced coffee (from $2.75) from Carmen Estate in Panama was crisp and clean, like blackberries steeped in water. Different varieties of hot coffee (from $2) are brewed in press pots throughout the day.

Even the mocha (from $3.70) was rich and memorable; it’s made with syrup created by Mast Brothers Chocolate.

Serious coffee has already conquered the West Coast. When delivered with this much style, it could win over New York, too.

Full Article

NYC Record Release Party

2009-09-09T11:04:00.006-04:00

5pm Saturday, September 12th at Mast Brothers Chocolate

Chocolate and Beer Tasting

2009-07-12T13:05:00.005-04:00

Monday, July 13th at Beer Table

Beer and chocolate are the focus of this intimate tasting, which will pair five rare brews (including Sinebrychoff Porter and Mikkeller Beer Geek Breakfast) with five chocolates from Brooklyn’s own artisanal outfit, Mast Brothers. The Mast duo will be on hand to chat about their goods. Reservations are a must. Beer Table, 427B Seventh Ave between 14th and 15th Sts, Park Slope, Brooklyn (718-965-1196). 7–8:30pm; $35.

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Make Music New York

2009-06-18T16:32:00.002-04:00

Beard Revue

2009-03-16T09:17:00.001-04:00

In the grand scheme of things, a beard is pretty tough to beat. Brother beards are like an earthquake wrapped in a hurricane nestled in a box of tsunamis.

Rick and Michael Mast, proprietors of Mast Brothers Chocolate, have a pair of natural-disaster strength beards. The brothers Mast practice parity in a conventional approach to their respective plumage, but the subtle aesthetics are commendable.

Michael Mast dons an appropriately chocolate brown beard at a medium length. Rick Mast’s beard is rich with crimson hues and is gradually longer at the chin. The beards’ charmingly rugged mien conjure up implications of great craftsmanship. Neither is favored more than the other, but a complimentary balance is struck.

These pilose brothers can be found haunting the fuzzy streets of Williamsburg.

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The New York Times

2009-02-25T09:09:00.002-05:00

Brooklyn's New Culinary Movement

By Oliver Schwaner-Albright

TO get the slightly battered convection oven for their new Brooklyn chocolate factory, Rick and Michael Mast traded 250 chocolate bars.

The chocolate is as good as legal tender for Andrew Tarlow and Mark Firth, owners of Marlow & Sons, the restaurant and specialty shop that bartered away the oven. “We can’t keep it in stock,” Mr. Tarlow said. “It sells better than anything else.”

About two years ago the Masts were trading truffles for beers at a local bar. Now Mast Brothers Chocolate has a national following as one of the few producers in the country, and the only one in the city, to make chocolate by hand from cacao beans they’ve roasted, in that oven. These days, with a kitchen and a bit of ambition, you can start to make a name for yourself in Brooklyn. The borough has become an incubator for a culinary-minded generation whose idea of fun is learning how to make something delicious and finding a way to sell it.

These Brooklynites, most in their 20s and 30s, are hand-making pickles, cheeses and chocolates the way others form bands and artists’ collectives. They have a sense of community and an appreciation for traditional methods and flavors. They also share an aesthetic that’s equal parts 19th and 21st century, with a taste for bold graphics, salvaged wood and, for the men, scruffy beards.

Rick Mast, 32, said he and his brother were initially attracted to the borough because it was cheaper than Manhattan. “But now I think the real draw is the creativity,” he said. “In Brooklyn, to be into food is do it yourself, to get your hands dirty, to roll up your sleeves. You want to peek in the kitchen in the back, as opposed to being served in the front.”

Gabrielle Langholtz, the editor of Edible Brooklyn, which chronicles the borough’s food scene, said it has grown along with the arrival of what she calls the “new demographic.”

“It’s that guy in the band with the big plastic glasses who’s already asking for grass-fed steak and knows about nibs,” Ms. Langholtz said.

“Ten years ago all of these people hadn’t moved to Brooklyn yet,” she added, comparing Brooklyn today to Berkeley in the 1970s. “There’s a relationship to food that comes with that approach to the universe,” Ms. Langholtz said. “Every person you pass has read Michael Pollan, every person has thought about joining a raw milk club, and if they haven’t made ricotta, they want to.”

The prevailing attitude is anticorporate, she said.

“Pre-industrial revolution tactics with food,” is how Frank Castronovo describes what he and Frank Falcinelli are up to at Prime Meats, a restaurant, specialty shop and butcher they are starting in Carroll Gardens, as well as Delightful Coffee, a cafe that will share a warehouse with the new Stumptown Coffee Roasters in Red Hook.

Along with butchering whole animals, Mr. Castronovo and Mr. Falcinelli, the owners of Frankies Spuntino restaurants in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side of Manhattan, will be making their own charcuterie at Prime Meats.

“The whole process, truthfully, will take a long time.” Mr. Falcinelli said. “The aged stuff will take a year to understand. Pâté will take a few months.”

Most of the artisans started simply and have stayed simple, like Salvatore Bklyn, makers of a superbly light ricotta. “We were selling it out of the back of a truck,” Betsy Devine, who makes the ricotta along with her partner, Rachel Mark, said of their first retail efforts. Now their product is in eight stores.

They learned their craft on a visit to Tuscany. The Masts essentially taught themselves. Others, like Tom Mylan at Marlow & Daughters, a butcher shop opened in December by the owners of Marlow & Sons, found mentors.

Mr. Mylan apprenticed himself last year at Fleisher’s, a highly regarded butcher shop in Kingston, N.Y., where he slept in the owners’ TV room for a month and a half.

At Marlow & Daughters, all of the butchering is done in plain sight. “We do this out on the floor because we want you to see the difference,” Mr. Mylan said. “We can tell you it’s all local, and it’s all pastured, and buzzword, buzzword, buzzword, but until you take out a whole animal and put it on the table people have no idea what it means to bring really good meat into the city and break it down.”

Mr. Mylan also teaches butchering at the Brooklyn Kitchen, a kitchen supply store in Williamsburg. He demonstrates with a whole pig. Every student goes home with six pounds of fresh pork.

“The classes have turned out to be much more of a success than I imagined,” said Harry Rosenblum, who opened the Brooklyn Kitchen with his wife, Taylor Erkkinen, in 2006.

Next month, Bob McClure, of McClure’s Pickles, will teach pickling there, and later this spring the Masts will teach chocolate-making.

“We’ve become something like a community,” Mr. Rosenblum added, explaining that the store holds the occasional potluck and has a food literature book club. When baking no-knead bread in Dutch ovens was popular a couple of years ago, customers who bought the pots often returned with gifts of freshly baked bread.

The Brooklyn Kitchen carries major brands, but it is the sole retailer for knives from Cut Brooklyn, a local specialty knife maker.

“It’s difficult to keep those guys stocked,” said Joel Bukiewicz, Cut Brooklyn’s owner and solitary employee. “It’s like sweeping a dirt floor.”

Maybe that’s because Mr. Bukiewicz takes 10 to 12 hours to fashion one eight-inch chef’s knife. In an average week he will make between four and six knives. He first learned how to make hunting knives in Georgia, and started creating kitchen knives in his small Gowanus workshop in 2007.

“There’s an appreciation here for craftsmanship and people who work with their hands,” Mr. Bukiewicz said. “I had no idea there was going to be this convergence of artists, artisans and food culture in Brooklyn.”

To design a boning knife, Mr. Bukiewicz has been sitting in on Mr. Mylan’s butchering classes and taking note of how his hands move.

That sort of collaboration is common.

Two weeks ago Sixpoint Craft Ales, in Red Hook, introduced Dubbel Trubbel, an ale made with cacao nibs from Mast Brothers Chocolate. Sixpoint Craft Ales already brews Gorilla Warfare, an American porter made with Ethiopian Yirgacheffe from Gorilla Coffee, the Park Slope cafe and roaster. At Wheelhouse Pickles, based in Park Slope, Jon Orren uses wort, a byproduct of brewing from Sixpoint Craft Ales, to flavor his Ploughman’s pickle, a mild, earthy relish made with Greenmarket root vegetables.

And McClure’s Pickles, of Williamsburg, is making a strong, grainy mustard with Brooklyn Brewery’s Brown Ale. (Mr. McClure, by the way, sometimes pays his picklers in pickles.)

Local store owners play an important role, more collaborators than simply merchants. Urban Rustic, Spuyten Duyvil Grocery, Blue Apron Foods, Bedford Cheese Shop and Marlow & Daughters all make a point of carrying Brooklyn-made foods.

Stinky Bklyn, a cheese shop in Carroll Gardens, carries wild boar pâté made by one of the salesmen at Smith & Vine, its sibling wine shop across the street. Robert Fischman, the fishmonger at Greene Grape Provisions in Fort Greene, sometimes sells fluke or striped bass he catches himself on one of the charter boats that departs from Sheepshead Bay. And later this spring the owners of Franny’s restaurant in Prospect Heights will open Bklyn Larder, which will sell salumi cured in-house.

Steven Manning, a manager at Urban Rustic, said he wants to make things easy for local food makers.

“There’s no red tape,” Mr. Manning said. “It’s, Give me the chocolate, here’s your money.”

Another culinary stage is the Brooklyn Flea, the Fort Greene flea market, now in winter quarters in Dumbo.

“I try everything that’s served there,” said Eric Demby, one of the market’s founders, recounting the time he slurped down six bowls of soup in one sitting.

“There’s an opportunity to be recognized, not just locally but nationally,” Mr. Demby said, explaining that Salvatore Bklyn created chocolate- and lemon-studded cannoli specifically for the market.

Not everyone who tries out is a star.

“The longer I do this the more I get a sense of who’s doing this for fun and who’s doing this for a life’s pursuit,” Mr. Demby said. “The ones who are doing it seriously are the ones who wait before they approach me because they want to make sure they have it right before they come to the Flea. The ones who are doing it for fun are the ones who think it’s a glorified bake sale.”

Some sellers at the Flea make sporadic appearances, like Plan B Foods, which sells caramelized onions in a jar. Now the onions are available at Greene Grape Provisions.

Others are regulars, like Mr. McClure and his brother, Joe, and Daniel Sklaar, a former financial analyst, who produces Fine & Raw, a velvety, complex chocolate made with unroasted cacao beans.

“I love being a part of this community,” said Mr. Sklaar, 28, noting that Fine & Raw’s packaging was created by a lingerie designer paid with chocolate. “Brooklyn is always in beta testing.”

But for all the momentum, most members of this food movement are taking time to refine their crafts.

Even though they could more than double their output to 2,000 bars a week, the Masts don’t have a timetable for increasing production in their new factory, a tastefully raw space with exposed brick walls and a counter salvaged from a 100-year-old Pennsylvania ice cream parlor.

“We’re not sure how a micro-batch chocolate factory is supposed to run,” Rick Mast said. “We’re going take our time and let it evolve.”

As Michael Mast, 29, said, “Slow growth, slow design, slow food. Slow, but without being flaky.”

The mantra is similar at Prime Meats, which has been opening in stages since January.

“It’s going to be incremental,” Mr. Castronovo said. “But when it’s ready you’re going to totally trip.”

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Daily Candy

2009-02-20T18:37:00.002-05:00

Eat Your Beans: Mast Brothers Chocolate Opens

Could be the weather, but nothing sends our hearts aflutter like huge, bushy, Brooklyn beards. (Ginger ones!)

So when we found out two brothers behind the scruff were making chocolate from scratch with their big, manly hands, we drooled all the way to their new factory/shop, Mast Brothers Chocolate, opening Saturday in Williamsburg (finally).

Self-taught sibs Rick and Michael Mast (the only cocoa bean-to-bar chocolate makers in NYC) renovated a lofty old garage with rustic wooden counters, slick paneling, and a permanent choco scent.

Bars of fleur de sel, dried cranberries, and “dark milk” will be poured without delay. Also on the menu are classes and wrapping parties with Mast’s signature patterned papers (one wrapped box equals one free glass of wine). Can’t wait to get your hands on ’em?

Make that a sugar rush order.

Mast Brothers Chocolate, 105 North Third Street, between Berry Street and Wythe Avenue, Williamsburg (718-388-2625 or mastbrotherschocolate.com). Open weekends, noon-6 p.m.

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Synesthesia 2009

2009-02-17T19:32:00.006-05:00

The Wild Project: 8pm, February 25-28th

Witness the next stage in the convergence of media. Now in its third season, Synesthesia is a live, annual event, many months in the making, that traces the journey of inspiration as it passes from one artist to another, from one genre to the next. Synesthesia is an Electric Pear exclusive production, conceived by Ashlin Halfnight and Melanie Sylvan, and staged for the first time in 2007. This year's show is directed by Brooklyn-based artists Ilana Manaster and Gregory Stuart Edwards, and offers up an evening of original film, music, painting, performance, dance, and cuisine.

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Tasting Table: New York

2009-02-03T23:02:00.008-05:00

A Brooklyn Star Turns Four: Celebrate Sixpoint's birthday with a new beer and a month-long party

If Brooklyn had an official goodwill ambassador, it would be Sixpoint Craft Ales, the Red Hook brewery that turns four this month. Though still a toddler by microbrewery standards, Sixpoint has already produced some of our favorite local brews—Sweet Action, Bengali Tiger and Righteous Ale among them.

For Sixpoint's fourth anniversary, its brewers have crafted yet another great creation. The just-released Dubbel Trubbel is a dark Belgian ale flavored with cocoa nibs from Williamsburg chocolatier Mast Brothers. With notes of banana and rich chocolate, this 9.6% ABV brew is strong and just the thing for a party.

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Time Magazine

2008-12-15T16:31:00.001-05:00

Brooklyn's Dark Secret

By Paige Reddinger

Most Americans think Switzerland is the only place to find fine chocolate, but two Iowa City-born brothers with a penchant for the popular confection are determined to make Brooklyn, NY a sweet tooth destination with their hand-made chocolate.

Rick Mast, 32 and Michael Mast, 29 conceived the idea for a chocolate factory when they began experimenting with different recipes in the apartment they shared in Williamsburg. Rick, a former chef at New York institutions like Gramercy Tavern and Soho House as well as a stint with chocolatier Jacques Torres, first learned about the complexity of chocolate in culinary school. He began testing — and tasting — some off-beat ideas and bringing the results home to his brother who was working in independent films. With their homemade chocolate they started to develop a cult following among friends and family and before long there was a business plan. "Things kind of came together and we kind of shook hands, quit our jobs and went for it," says Michael.

Now a year later, they have the only bean-to-bar chocolate maker in New York and one of only a handful throughout the United States. After sourcing the beans themselves in places like Venezuela, Ecuador and Madagascar, they turn cacao into chocolate by breaking roasted beans down into pieces, shelling them and then grinding them into paste which then gets kneaded and refined until the desired texture and flavors are produced.

What started as an interest in serving their community has blossomed into a booming wholesale business catering to clients such as Marlow & Sons restaurant and the Urban Rustic grocery store in Brooklyn as well as the Stone Barns market in Pocantico Hills, New York. The brothers also plan to open their first store in Williamsburg early next year. "We actually have over 250 accounts on a waiting list across the country so it's just getting crazy. We barely have time to make everything," says Rick. The new store will also serve as their factory, which will allow customers to watch the detailed craftsmanship that goes into the process of making the bars by hand. In addition to their bars — beautifully wrapped in Florentine paper and paper designed by local artists — the brothers plan to sell chocolate produced by other bean-to-bar makers in the U.S. as well as truffles, hot cocoa powder and chocolate that can be used as a base for the customer's own experimentation.

Eventually they would like to become New York's designated chocolate makers, but for now they are savoring sweet success.

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Gifted: A Holiday Market

2008-11-23T21:00:00.011-05:00

Brooklyn Flea presents Gifted

The Flea has partnered with Time Out NY to present Gifted: A Holiday Market, featuring 40 vendors curated by Senor himself along with TONY Seek Editor Erin Wylie. Gifted will take place inside the historic Brooklyn Masonic Temple--the amazing building with the columns across the street from the Flea--on the 4 Sundays Nov. 30, Dec. 7, 14 + 21, from 11am to 6pm. (The "regular" Flea will of course continue on at the schoolyard during this time, with Dec. 21 remaining our last date of the season.)

We curated the mix of vendors at Gifted to be sort of like the Flea: stuff you can only find there; folks selling beautiful, unique items they made themselves; vintage/antique objects that are distinctive and affordable; snazzy jewelry; cool, quality art; and of course yummy foodstuffs. Our goofy tagline is "Edited + Eclectic for Everyone."

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The New Yorker

2008-11-19T10:10:00.015-05:00

Off the Menu: Rick Mast

In honor of this week’s Food Issue, we consulted our favorite arbiters of New York’s dining scene and asked them to compose literary tastings. Here is Rick Mast, of Mast Brothers Chocolate, New York City’s only bean-to-bar chocolate maker, producing micro-batches of handcrafted chocolate on the Brooklyn waterfront:

Walt Whitman, “Leaves of Grass”

Dark Milk

Pair this great poet with a dark milk chocolate that contains at least fifty per cent cacao, allowing the integrity of the bean to remain without being overpowered by refined caramel notes. Both Walt and this chocolate are intensely romantic, effortlessly complex, and nostalgic, without being dumbed down by mindless sweetness. Walt himself confessed to drinking cocoa every morning; dark milk is often described as drinking cocoa in a bar.

Othello, “Othello,” by William Shakespeare

81% with Fleur de Sel

This proud, lovesick Moor should be paired with eighty-one per cent dark chocolate, seasoned with chocolate’s version of the Venetian Sea, fleur de sel. The sea salt gives context to the sugar, intensifying not only the floral and cinnamon notes but also the sweetness. The complexity of the delicately salted chocolate may even surpass Othello’s jealousy, but at least your mouth will have a happy ending. Avoid your own jealous rampage by not sharing.

Johnny Cash, “Cash”

Single-Origin Dominican Republic

Try the man in black (one of my heroes) with a dark single-origin chocolate from the Dominican Republic. This cacao is particularly delicious in its pure form, unadulterated by additional ingredients. After you unwrap one of these rustic bars and open up this indispensable autobiography, you may catch the scent of rum and tobacco—from the chocolate and the pages.

Mr. Darcy, “Pride and Prejudice,” by Jane Austen

Patric 70% Madagascar Sambirano Valley

Ever thought, “Who in their right mind would spend that much on chocolate?” Give it a chance, Elizabeth; Mr. Darcy waits to be unwrapped. Even the most to-the-manor-born chocolate is relatively inexpensive compared to a bottle of wine, and just as transporting. Allow yourself Patric’s seventy-per-cent cacao bar from the Sambirano Valley, in Madagascar. Inside, you will find perhaps the most refined chocolate of the micro-batch scene. Cherry and plum will knock you on your rear in surprise.

Henry David Thoreau, “Walden”

Amedei Limited Edition Chuao

Mr. Thoreau hoped to connect us to the earth around us. The chocolate that best embodies the soil it comes from is Amedei’s Chuao, containing seventy per cent cacao. Chuao is arguably the finest and most untouched varietal, with an explosion of raisin, blackberries, and molasses straight from the earth to your palette.

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Tasting Table: New York

2008-11-14T11:48:00.005-05:00

Cocoa Bros: The Mast brothers are leading New York's bean-to-bar charge

The status of high-end microbatch chocolate is quickly catching up to its cult coffee counterparts: Mass production is out; single-origin beans and small-batch roasting are in. Leading this movement in New York is Mast Brothers Chocolate, launched last year by barbate brothers Rick and Michael (33 and 29, respectively), who turn hand-sourced beans from small farms in Madagascar, Venezuela and Ecuador into beautiful, deeply complex chocolate bars.

The Masts start with hulking burlap bags full of cocoa beans and process them in a Greenpoint warehouse, then wrap the bars in a motley collection of vintage paper from Florence and London. Their chocolates are sold mainly at outposts in Brooklyn ($7 to $10), though online ordering is coming soon. They also sell sacks of excellent chocolate bark ($12), heavily loaded with dried cranberries, nuts and pumpkinseeds.

Soon, we'll all be able to witness their bean-to-bar operation firsthand: Next month, the brothers plan to open their long-awaited factory and retail store in Williamsburg.

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Perishable

2008-11-03T10:41:00.006-05:00

Introducing Perishable, a Composition retail exhibit

Perishable is the latest exhibit in our ongoing series that we like to describe as: Curated (1 Theme) Rotational (3 Months) Retail (Lots of cool stuff). By presenting a curated exhibit, Composition is able to share its unique understanding of the interaction between art, design and consumer goods. Composition finds individual designers and small manufacturers both locally and from around the world whose products match our curatorial vision. By bringing these goods together in an exhibit format, we hope to heighten our shoppers' retail experience.

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The New York Times

2008-10-29T14:47:00.004-04:00

Brooklyn Returns to a Heady Time

By PAUL ADAMS

BROOKLYN produced one-fifth of the nation’s beer as recently as 1960. By 1976, when Rheingold and Schaefer shuttered their Brooklyn plants, the number of local breweries dropped to zero.

Sixpoint Craft Ales, which has been brewing an increasingly popular range of beers in a small brew house in Red Hook for four years, just bought a bottling line and a brewing system that will let it increase production tenfold — to about 60,000 barrels a year.

They’re hoping to close a deal on a property in Williamsburg to install their new equipment soon.

“I don’t think we’ll have any trouble selling every drop we make,” said Shane C. Welch, president and founder of Sixpoint.

Brooklyn Brewery re-established the association between the borough and beer when it opened in 1988, though it has the vast majority of its production in Utica. But for the past few years it has been trying to find a location in the borough so it can triple its local production, bottling beer as well as brewing draft beer, which it has been doing at a plant in Williamsburg since 1996.

Steve Hindy, the company’s president, so far has been unable to find affordable property but said he has been offered spaces outside the city by “every real estate broker east of the Mississippi.”

Greenpoint Beer Works in Clinton Hill, which has mainly brewed for the Heartland Brewery restaurants since it opened in 2003, started its own line of craft beers, Kelso of Brooklyn, two years ago. Named for the brewmaster, Kelly Taylor, and his wife, Sonya Giacobbe, it accounts for just five percent of the brew house’s output — about 500 barrels a year, double what it was a year ago.

Sixpoint’s growth in the borough has been the most rapid. Its sales have doubled every year since it started in 2004 with a dozen customers. (It even contracts out some brewing to Greenpoint.) Some 300 bars and restaurants in New York now pour beers from the Sixpoint lineup: Sweet Action, Brownstone Ale, Righteous Rye.

One of the brewery’s hallmarks is a constant flow of experiments, expressions of the brewers’ hobbyist verve that are still feasible because of its small scale. In its four years, Sixpoint has produced 40 different beers, some only once.

Its beers are a staple at beer lovers’ haunts like Barcade in Williamsburg and Jimmy’s No. 43 in the East Village. Gramercy Tavern pours Sixpoint, and Lil’ Frankie’s in the East Village has a pale ale custom-made to suit its pizza. The roster has recently grown to include a dozen bars in New Jersey and about 30 in Massachusetts. At Bierkraft, in Park Slope, where draft beer is sold by the half-gallon growler jug, “every third person who walks in the door asks for Sixpoint,” according to Ben Granger, an owner. It’s the top-selling draft beer at Whole Foods on Houston Street, too, with over 200 growlers sold in an average week.

For Mr. Welch, who moved to New York from Wisconsin, situating Sixpoint in Brooklyn was a deliberate choice.

“We weren’t able to identify any other place in the country that we thought would be as receptive to the type of beers we wanted to make,” he said. “Brooklyn had a history of producing beautiful handcrafted stuff, and it was having a creative renaissance.”

If there’s a unifying character among the various Sixpoint beers, he said, it would arise from “the positive attitudes of the people who work here.” Or it could be the house strain of yeast, a fast-acting agent called 007 that quickly ferments the sugars in the malt, yielding potent brews, and then settles out easily when it has done its work, so there is no need to filter the beers for clarity.

The 007 also accentuates the flavor of hops, like Sixpoint’s favored citrusy Yakima breeds. As a result, Sixpoint beers are quite hoppy. To compensate, beers such as Sweet Action start with a complement of sweeter malts. The mellow Brownstone ale uses 11 different malts, where most commercial beers get by on just a few.

As Mr. Welch explained the process, he reached down into a sack of honey malt to offer me a sample: little grains with the full, malty sweetness of Whoppers and a subtle cereal tang. He continued nibbling on them as he reflected on Sixpoint’s progress.

“Constantly inventing new styles is the main thing that keeps it fun,” Mr. Welch said, then corrected himself. “But the best part of my whole Sixpoint experience has been when I give tours and teach people about beer” — something that will be a specialty at the new facility.

Mr. Hindy said that if Brooklyn Brewery had a bigger space, he would like to offer even more tours than the company conducts at its Williamsburg plant now, and open a beer garden restaurant. While this could enhance the local feel for its beer, the company is no longer the regional craft brewery it was when it started. With sales extending to Hong Kong and Finland, Brooklyn Brewery, which makes 80,000 31-gallon barrels a year, is among the top 30 beer producers in the nation. While the top-selling lager and pilsner are made upstate, the brewing at the Williamsburg plant concentrates on an ever-changing variety of small-batch and seasonal beers. Brewmaster’s Reserve Grand Cru is brewed with coriander and New York State honey, and a premium Belgian-style ale called Brooklyn Local 1 weighs in at a redoubtable 9 percent alcohol, about twice as much as is usual.

Brooklyn Brewery brews twice as much beer in the borough as Sixpoint does and a third more than Greenpoint Beer Works. The two smaller brewers seem to better capture the Brooklyn boutique beer aesthetic.

St. Gowanus, an ale fermented with Belgian yeast, is the latest hit for Greenpoint’s Kelso line, which includes Nut Brown Lager and Hoplager. Mr. Taylor has produced beers with ingredients made or grown at Dan Barber’s Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Westchester County, like a lager infused with lavender and honey. For an extra dose of local flavor, Mr. Taylor also uses wild airborne yeasts, rather than cultivated strains, to make some of his beers, such as a golden ale called Brooklyn Brett that is named for the characteristic sour flavor of Brettanomyces yeast.

Keeping neighborly, if not strictly local, Sixpoint steeps fruity Ethiopian beans from Park Slope’s Gorilla coffee roasters to make its highly caffeinated Gorilla Warfare Coffee Porter, which tastes like a mellow, alcoholic version of Manhattan Special, the coffee soda. Currently a lot of tasty trial and error is going into devising a chocolate beer, to be brewed with nibs from the local chocolate makers at Mast Brothers. And the trade works both ways: Brooklyn-based Wheelhouse Pickles makes a relish using unfermented Brownstone ale.

“In Park Slope especially,” said Mr. Granger of Bierkraft, “people want to know where their food and drinks come from. They love Sixpoint’s grassroots, local image. When Aaron Stumpf, the head brewer, comes in here — well, I don’t want to be harsh, but he definitely looks like he’s been brewing all day.”

Full Article

Z!nk

2008-10-16T16:32:00.004-04:00

The Dark Bite: Mast Brothers are the New Stars in Bean to Bar Chocolate

By Colleen Canney

Although many self-professed chocolate snobs think we know all about our vice, most of us have no idea how the sweet stuff is actually made. Brothers Rick and Michael Mast, co-founders of Mast Brothers Chocolate, can explain - with taste. "We don't want to be preachy; it should be fun. It's just chocolate!" says Michael.

Rick, 31, and Michael, 28, the only "bean to bar" artisan chocolate producers in New York, plan to show locals the entire chocolate-making process at their flagship store, slated to open this month. The pair originally started experimenting with chocolate in 2004 for friends and family at their shared Williamsburg, Brooklyn apartment. After working as an apprentice and chef at high-end New York restaurants Gramercy Tavern and Soho House and apprenticing under celebrity chef Dan Sauer and confectioner Jacques Torres, Rick decided the brothers were ready to launch their own business. Mast Brothers Chocolate was incorporated in September 2007, when the brothers began perfecting their techniques and recipes full time. The Masts found their hometown of Williamsburg, Brooklyn to be the ideal spot to settle, in a century-old Brooklyn warehouse covered in scaffolding and urban art. "Williamsburg was once filled with manufacturers of all sorts, I think it's also the greatest place in the city for food," says Rick. "We want to bring food manufacturing back to the neighborhood."

For the last year, the pair produced 300 bars per week out of a small loft, which was kept at a cocoa-comfortable 65 degrees and decorated with a poster of cacao bean varietals, an ad for the San Francisco Slow Food Nation Festival and several rickety shelves stacked with carboard boxes of nuts, sugar, sea salt and syrup. Their new, 1,000-square foot space is still intimate albeit much more impressive: Chocolate-making machines hum, filling the shop with a warm and earthy "barnyard and grandma's brownies" aroma. There's an everlasting supply of fresh cacao beans in burlap sacks, and customers can watch the brothers at work while sipping hot chocolate and nibbling on confections at a cozy, cafe-style bar in front.

The brothers produce ten types of chocolate bars, with top-sellers including 81 percent cacao chocolate with French Fleur de sel, dark chocolate mixed with toasted almonds and sea salt and dark milk chocolate with pecans roasted in maple syrup (which comes from their family's farm in Quebec). They use only certified organic cacao from co-op, fair labor farms in the Dominican Republic and the Ocumare region of Venezuela, which Michael says produces the rarest and most valuable cacao. It's chocolate at its purest, with licorice and raisin notes balanced with a touch of berry. Dominican chocolate has a spicy cinnamon-banana start with a rich, leathery finish. "Choosing the bean is the single most important part of the process," says Rick. "Any food will only be as good as your ingredients."

Transforming high-quality beans into chocolate bars chez Mast is an elaborate process that lasts five days, during which the brothers first sort and clean the beans by hand and lightly roast them for two days in four-pound batches, increasing their amount of work but preserving the complexity of the cacao. "I think our carefully controlled roasts separate us from the competition," says Michael. "It's pretty easy to taste the difference." They then remove the husks with a toaster-sized winnowing machine and use a hand-mixer-sized grinder to refine and liquefy the cacao, adding sugar or milk powder for their "dark milk chocolate" (it's 60 percent cacao, which the brothers consider milk chocolate but fits under most other chocolatiers' definition of "dark"). Finally they use a conch (two granite rollers commonly used to mill rice) to mix and grind the chocolate for another two days, creating a smooth texture and balanced flavor. The process is far from consistent, however, as they are always experimenting with various techniques to create new textures and flavors. With the opening of the new shop, Mast Brothers Chocolate will satisfy plenty of chocolate cravings - they've got a waiting list of over 50 retailers from around the country and as far away as Portugal. "But we're trying to keep everything authentic and simple," says Michael. "Our customer is our community and hopefully always will be."

Bust

2008-10-08T19:35:00.009-04:00

The Green Party

Stone Barns Harvest Festival

2008-10-03T11:28:00.006-04:00

My brother and I will be up at Stone Barns this Saturday, October 4th, for their annual Harvest Festival, representing (and selling) our very own handmade "bean to bar" chocolates (plus maybe some seasonal surprises)! Come join us if you'd like. From the sounds of it I can't imagine anything better than this! There will be hayrack rides, pie contests, folk music and, of course, great food.

If you miss it this time, I would encourage anyone to try and get up to Stone Barns and check it out. You can always purchase our chocolate at the Blue Hill Cafe while you are roaming around the farm.

click here for ticket info

Hope this message finds everyone well and I'd love to see you all there.

Happy Autumn.

Conde Naste Traveller

2008-10-01T15:27:00.000-04:00

Wrap Stars

By Rachael Shapiro

'We're the only bean-to-bar chocolate-makers in New York,' says Richard Mast of Mast Brothers Chocolate, a bijou company which has opened its first shop in Brooklyn hotspot Williamsburg. The year-old company has a cult following among NY foodies. Beans come from tiny plantations in Venezuela and are turned into chocolate, peppered with ingredients such as fleur de sel and olive oil-roasted hazelnuts. Each bar is hand-wrapped in eye-catching paper, sourced from around the globe.

Education Through Music

2008-09-19T09:37:00.013-04:00

Sweet N Savory Wine Tasting Benefit

Support Education Through Music

Join Prime Suspects along with Sponsors Chase Bank and Mast Brothers Chocolate at Artica Bar's Ice Lounge on Thursday, September 25, 2008 at 7pm.

It’s time to ready your palette (and favorite outfit) for our “Sweet and Savory” Wine Tasting!

This must-attend mixer is guaranteed to tap into your inner-socialite! Join us as we enjoy 6 selections (3 red / 3 white) with Leaders of the Chocolate Revolution, Mast Brothers Chocolate. Mingle with other savvy professionals, profile for the camera, and make new friends while supporting Education Through Music, a non-profit organization that makes music education a reality for thousands of at-risk kids who would otherwise have limited or no access to the arts.

About ETM:

Education Through Music was founded to promote the integration of music into the curricula of disadvantaged schools in order to enhance students' academic performance and general development.

ETM believes that every child deserves a well-rounded education: one that includes music. Unfortunately, many schools, especially those serving children in low-income communities, provide no music instruction or rely solely on short-term programs that do not serve every student. ETM created a comprehensive program that incorporates music into the education of every child, including those with special needs. Learn more about ETM by visiting their website at www.etmonline.org.

Time Out New York

2008-08-28T09:55:00.010-04:00

Industrial revolution: Food manufacturers edge their way back to Brooklyn—with a modern artisanal twist.

By Rebecca Flint Marx

Once upon a time, Brooklyn was a factory town—home to businesses as varied as Domino Sugar, Gretsch musical instruments, Esquire Shoe Polish and the Corning Glass Works. That time, of course, came to an end years ago, long before the word Gretsch was associated with luxury condos and the Red Hook docks became gateways for Kashi cereal and couches.

While some factories continue to flourish in and around Williamsburg, the term Brooklyn industries tends to conjure images of overpriced hoodies rather than anything remotely connected to manufacturing. So the idea of utilizing onetime industrial space for actual industry seems, if not quite revolutionary, then peculiar.

For Rick and Michael Mast, the decision to open their Mast Brothers Chocolate factory in Williamsburg was as much a nod to the past as to the future. “We could have opened somewhere cheaper,” Rick says, “but that would be doing what everybody else has been doing. We want to be connecting to the community.”

Rick worked with Jacques Torres after culinary school, and the brothers first crafted chocolate bars in their Williamsburg apartment and then in a Greenpoint factory, finally debuting in stores like Marlow & Sons and Urban Rustic this past winter. And while the new plant will allow them to go from 300 to more than 1,000 bars a week, they remain finicky about where they’ll sell them. “We don’t necessarily want to be in every Whole Foods,” says Rick. In a similar vein, the factory—which they claim will become New York’s only bean-to-bar chocolate outfit when it opens in October—is somewhat delicately referred to as a “chocolaterie and laboratory” on its website. If this is the face of New York’s new food-manufacturing industry, then it’s a very pretty one.

Farther down the Brooklyn waterfront in Red Hook—where one of the last vestiges of the food industry, the long-defunct Revere Sugar Refinery, was sold to developers in 2005—Mark Snyder is also mixing history with contemporary appetites. In 2004 he founded the Red Hook–based Angel’s Share wine-distribution company, and this September Snyder and his partners will unveil their own label—made entirely from Long Island grapes. Unlike other urban vino joints that have popped up of late (such as Bridge Urban Winery and Michael Dorf’s City Winery), this facility will be purely functional—crushing, fermenting and aging the grapes on-site. “There won’t be a tasting room,” he says. “We don’t want to create a tourist atmosphere. We want to make the best possible wine we can.”

The decision to take this gamble in Red Hook came largely from local pride and a love of the neighborhood. “I could name two dozen winemakers in New York City who have been to Napa and Burgundy six times but have never been to the North Fork,” he says. “Long Island suffers from a lack of history and reputation. We want to give back to Brooklyn and Long Island.” And to evoke the romance of their surroundings, the yet-to-be-announced label’s name will reflect Red Hook’s waterfront heritage.

If the Snyder and Mast projects are to have the word industry attached to them, it should be preceded by boutique. Both are resolutely small-batch, handcrafted ventures, and the products, such as the Masts’ $7 dark-chocolate fleur de sel bar, sell for a premium. Even the way Rick Mast describes the factory’s café—which will have burlap bags full of cocoa beans alongside the truffles and cookies—sounds as painstakingly crafted as his chocolate. “It’ll be a completely different chocolate experience,” he says earnestly. “In my opinion, more soulful.”

Whatever they’re selling, the new artisanal producers are nothing like their predecessors. If anything, they’re the natural offspring of the socioeconomic factors that account for why places like Williamsburg and Red Hook have so few working factories left. Theirs are lifestyle-driven goods tailored to the values and aesthetics of people who reside in those converted factory spaces. It’s a stretch to say that the openings signal a return to a glorious industrial past, but it’s an absolute certainty that their owners are in tune with the present.

Full Article

New York Post

2008-07-14T21:04:00.006-04:00

Taking a Bite of Brooklyn: A Rising Number of Artisanal-Food Makers Help Their Neighbors Eat Locally

By Chris Erikson

When he graduated from the Institute for Culinary Education, Rick Mast went the usual apprenticeship route, taking kitchen jobs at Gramercy Tavern and Soho House. But he found himself thinking about chocolate. In cooking school he'd been smitten by its complexity and its rich history, by "how temperamental it is to work with, and how creative you can be with it."

So he went to work at the Brooklyn shop of boutique chocolatier Jacques Torres. It was a great place to learn, but Mast soon grew restless.

"I starting thinking, why am I making chocolate for someone else?" says Mast, 31, a genial former musician raised in Iowa City.

After all, he was already making his own chocolate at home, and people "went crazy over it." And he was taken by the idea of creating a brand that would appeal to his peers, eschewing the "cheesiness" of many chocolate shops, and packaging aimed at "some old lady who wants to give it to her friends for tea."

He shared that thought with his brother Michael, 29, who lives near him in Williamsburg. Rick was used to his younger sibling talking him down from his various schemes, but Michael surprised him by taking a shine to the idea.

"Williamsburg's got that do-it-yourself kind of attitude," says Michael, who'd come to New York in 2001, aspiring to produce independent films, and was doing accounting for production companies. Between glass blowers, clothing designers and other creatives of every ilk, he says, "everywhere there's people making stuff."

So as of last September, the two started making stuff of their own, as the co-founders of Mast Brothers Chocolate, whose initial production facilities were the brothers' apartments. Now operating from a Greenpoint loft building, they're the city's only "bean to bar" chocolate maker, taking cacao from Venezuela and the Dominican Republic and handcrafting it into dark chocolates of towering quality.

If Jacques Torres is to Hershey's as a microbrewery is to Coors, then the Mast Brothers are something else entirely - more akin to a gifted home brewer who crafts specialty beers in his basement and sells them to friends and neighbors.

And they're in good company. Brooklyn is home to a rising number of artisanal food makers, whose shoestring budgets and youthful energy bring to mind the culinary equivalent of an indie band. Working without investors, employees, distributors or publicists, they operate from Greenpoint, where the Masts' neighbors include the winery Brooklyn Oenology; to Park Slope, home to Nunu's organic chocolates and the small-batch Wheelhouse Pickles; and Red Hook, where a 29-year-old former law student runs Six Point Craft Ales, which sells nearly all of its output to local bars and restaurants.

"Among this generation there's an unprecedented amount of interest in food and more specifically in local food, on the part of both consumers and producers," says Tom Mylan, the butcher at the Williamsburg restaurant Marlow and Sons and co-founder of the UnFancy Food Show, an upstart retort to Manhattan's annual Fancy Food Show. Two weeks ago the second installment of the show drew 2,000 people, who braved a rainstorm to drink Six Point brews and sample patés, cheeses, sweets and other locally made treats.

A CULINARY HOTSPOT

That kind of enthusiasm for handcrafted local products - largely from 20- and 30-somethings who a decade ago might have been more inclined toward Bud and Cheetos than Belgian dubbel ales and farmhouse cheeses - has allowed the borough's fledgling food makers to thrive. They've found an enthusiastic clientele at a small network of specialty stores like Urban Rustic in Williamsburg and Stinky Bklyn in Cobble Hill, as well as outlets like the three-month-old Brooklyn Flea in Fort Greene.

"Brooklyn is one of the best places in the country for doing this," says Williamsburg resident Bob McClure, who sells $12 jars of his hand-packed McClure's Pickles at the Flea as well as a dozen shops in Brooklyn and Manhattan. "You can find people who are willing to try anything, and aren't afraid to pay extra for something high-quality, because they know who's creating it and how they're making it."

McClure, a 29-year-old actor and comedy writer, started the business two years ago with his younger brother, Joe, using an old family recipe they learned while growing up in Detroit, during weekend pickling sessions with their parents. Two summers ago Bob made a batch and gave them to friends, and the raves they drew set him and Joe thinking.

"We talked one day, and we were like, let's give this a shot," he says.

So they rented a commercial kitchen in Michigan, where Joe is a doctoral student in physiology, and made a test run of 1,000 jars. Soon the verdict was in.

"We knew we had a pretty good pickle," he says. "Now we were like, all right, there's a demand."

They took out a loan for $50,000, and now, between acting jobs and freelance design work, McClure spends his time making deliveries, doing paperwork and testing new products in his kitchen. And once a month he flies to Detroit to join Joe for a few marathon sessions of pickling and packing.

How many hours does he put into it weekly? He laughs at the question.

"You sleep it," he says.

But he loves the work, and enjoys being part of a community that extends from the farmers who grow their cucumbers and the shop owners who sell their pickles to his fellow Brooklyn food makers, who share tips and otherwise enjoy a friendly camaraderie.

"What's so great is that there's this focus on community relationships, and making your food life connected to the people around you," he says.

DRINKING IT IN

If Kings County offers some food makers a nurturing home, to Alie Shaper it offered something more: sheer inspiration. It was the borough itself that motivated Shaper, a Carroll Gardens resident, to start her year-old winery, Brooklyn Oenology.

A Long Island native, Shaper, who's 36, studied engineering in college, and spent a few postgrad years working in Silicon Valley. Her passion was wine, though, and when she came back East determined to "do something fun for a while," she took a job at a Hudson Valley winery, helping out in the tasting room and giving tours of the cellar.

Gradually, wine took over her life, as she took a succession of jobs in the industry, with the goal of opening a winery someday lodged in the back of her mind. But the creative energy that captivated her when she moved to Brooklyn three years ago made her think maybe she didn't have to wait.

"I got so caught up in it. There are so many artistic and entreprenurial adventures, and everyone's trying to make the best quality, most artisanal things they can," she says.

On a visit to an artist-filled former warehouse in Red Hook, "It hit me on the head like a brick: It would be really cool to put a winery here."

That didn't quite pan out. Today her office is in an industrial stretch of Greenpoint, and she uses a custom crushing facility on Long Island to make her wines, which so far include a 2005 Merlot and Chardonnay, released last November. (2007 vintages will follow next month, along with four new varietals.) But her bottles feature Brooklyn artists' work on the labels, and she's planning to bring her winemaking operation to the borough as soon as possible, even scheming to use grapes grown within New York City.

GROWING PAINS

If a preference for local ingredients is something these food makers share, so is a preoccupation with what Bob McClure calls the "integrity of the product."

"We're absolutely, 1,000 percent focused on the product being great, and letting that substitute for marketing ourselves," says Betsy Devine, 30, who with her partner Rachel Mark, 27, founded Salvatore Brooklyn, a brand of ricotta cheese inspired by a mind-blowing version they encountered on a trip to Italy.

That approach seems to be working. Since they started last year, business has steadily grown, allowing Devine, a veteran chef, to quit her restaurant job in March. They're hoping to expand into different cheeses, but for now their biggest issue is meeting orders.

The same goes for the McClure brothers, who "never anticipated the demand," says Bob, and are contemplating how to grow without losing their homespun appeal. Contracting out the packing would help, but "but we don't want to, because want to know how every single jar is made," he says.

Justine Pringle, who makes Nunu Chocolates on graveyard shifts in a local restaurant's kitchen after finishing her day job in the office of a Midtown health-care firm, has likewise been taken aback by the interest in her sweets.

"I'm at a point now where I'm either going to stay where I am and stagnate or take the next big leap," she says.

For the Mast brothers, whose $7 handwrapped bars are flying out the door, the answer is a larger facility they plan to open in October, with a storefront where they'll sell their wares along with selections from other small chocolatiers. In between making chocolate, dealing with suppliers and doing the books, they're currently rehabbing a space on N. 3rd Street, piling onto a debt load that started with a $35,000 bank loan.

What they'd eventually like, says Rick, is to grow into "New York's chocolate maker." But if they stay Williamsburg's chocolate maker that's fine too, say the brothers, who take a certain pride in a role they compare to that of a family farmer.

"That's the serious part under the fun: being a person who produces food for the community," says Rick. "We're not looking to serve chocolate to the world. Why can't you have your chocolate produced by someone you know?"

Full Article

Unfancy Food Show

2008-06-19T23:43:00.001-04:00

We're Calling This One A Success

By Champions of Unfancy

Precisely double the number of vendors we had last year. More than twice the number of attendees and definitely triple the good time. The second annual was proof that people are interested in hand made food. Rillettes, chocolate, honey, ricotta, craft ales, local authors, tortillas, and ready to eat pork plus ice cream. Seeing people in the bar, leaning against the pool table with ice cream cones and beers in their hands was all we really needed to get it that something about the event was really working.

Thanks to all those who helped make the show happen- first and foremost the staff at the East River Bar and all the producers who hawked their wares, Annaliese Griffin (our publicist for the last couple weeks), Nancy Nowacek who provides us with our emblem each year, and all the extra hands that made ice runs, delivered beers to vendors and put money in the juke box.

Full Site

New York Magazine's Grub Street

2008-06-19T20:49:00.008-04:00

Butcher Parties Against ‘Joke’ Fancy Foods Show and ‘Joyless’ Greenmarket: Tom Mylan's pig headed approach

When we get an invite that says, “We will set something on fire, and it may be a can of PBR,” we perk up. This one came from Tom Mylan, the blogging butcher at Diner and Marlow & Sons who occasionally teaches you how to cut up a lamb (sorry, ladies, he’s taken). He and Sasha Davies of Cheese by Hand are bringing together producers at Jasper Hill Farm, Sixpoint Craft Ales, and Salvatore Brooklyn, as well as local pickle makers, beekeepers, and chocolatiers, for the UnFancy Food Show, a jab at the Fancy Food Show at the Javits Center. It occurs on the same date, June 29, at East River Bar, from noon to 6 p.m. After you read our interview with Mylan, you’ll agree it’ll be the place to be.

Williamsburg has a reputation for being full of disaffected hipsters. Do they really care where their food comes from?

Absolutely. The majority are NYU-student dipshits who are buying their clothes at Urban Outfitters and are living here because it’s cool. The people that are actually the avant-garde — the people who are pushing “hipster culture” forward, who are actually intelligent and aren’t just into ironic T-shirts — are interested in a large spectrum of things, and food is just one of them

So what’s your beef with the Fancy Foods Show?

The Fancy Food Show has turned into this joke — it’s mostly commodities stuff that is no different than a barrel of oil. There’s a limited supply, and people go and negotiate deals. It’s a big business — most of the stuff is imported or produced industrially. We’re having people who actually make the stuff in small-production batches, literally by hand. The other orthodoxy that we’re reacting to is the one at the Greenmarket — the sort of Alice Waters, precious, let’s-all-pat-ourselves-on-the-back-liberal-guilt kind of joyless thing that the Greenmarkets are. Or the culture that surrounds them. (I’m not knocking the Greenmarket). It’s that culture of joyless healthy consumption as sort of penance for being able to drive SUVs or something. We wanted it to become fun again.

Obviously, you think there’s a need for a Greenmarket alternative.

Our next step will be a thing called the Blackmarket. It’ll be a small e-mail list where people will be invited the week before to sell their moonshine and pickles and homemade bitters — things that are illegal to sell because no one is producing them in a commercial kitchen.

Moonshine aside, tell me about someone who’s doing something interesting outside of the Greenmarket system?

Mateo [Kehler] from Jasper Hill has built an enormous 22,000-square-foot underground-cave complex in the northeast kingdom of Vermont where he has started doing European-style cooperative affinage and distribution. He’s getting all these small producers to give him cheese, and he ages cheese for them. He’s going to move forward into aging hams and stuff like that. He’s really the future of small or slow food.

How about someone who doesn’t make food?

The Cut Brooklyn guy makes chef knives by hand in this tiny workshop down in Gowanus. Each knife has ten hours of labor in it.

So what do you see as the next trend in this area? The next Greenmarket?

The Greenmarket very soon is going to lose its — I’m not going to say its monopoly, since I don’t think there’s anything inherently evil about them. But on that sort of bizarre market sort of thing. Robert LaVal is trying to do the New Amsterdam Market. He’s trying to get one of those old Fulton Fish markets turned into a permanent indoor market like the Embarcadero in San Francisco. And then obviously what we’re doing with the Blackmarket. And that maker mind-set where people are reverse engineering and making stuff out of recycled goods (making a table out of a door), and where people are producing things again, that’s really big, especially here in Brooklyn.

Full Interview

Edible Brooklyn

2008-03-22T20:48:00.004-04:00

Chocolatier Brothers Raise the Bar

By Aria Sloss

On Saturdays at the Williamsburg Artists and Fleas Market, you can taste the latest addition to the artisanal chocolate craze. But Rick and Michael Mast, two lankily charming Iowa City–born

brothers, will be the first to point out that their nascent business (operating, for the time being, out of a kitchen attached to Michael’s Williamsburg apartment; a store is slated to open a few blocks away this summer) is hardly about jumping on the bandwagon. “Man,” says Rick, smiling ruefully, “you know, we’ve been doing dark milk chocolate for about five, six months now. Pretty much since we started selling.” “And then,” Michael breaks in, “that Times piece comes out and it’s like everyone goes—wow! Dark milk chocolate! Who’d have thought it?”

The Mast Brothers’ version weighs in at 60 percent cacao, lending a lush complexity to the taste that quiets any fears of an aching Hershey’s-like sweetness. Their single-origin dark chocolates come in a spectrum of percentages, ranging from a midnight-hued 81 percent Venezuelan sprinkled with fleur de sel, to a 72 percent Ecuadorian bar that Rick describes as “big and full, like a cabernet or a shiraz,” down to a coffee bean–colored 66 percent Venezuelan

bar he characterizes as something closer to a pinot noir. All are delicious. And lest any doubters out there start trash-talking the virtues of white chocolate, the Mast Brothers are doing their part to champion the underdog. Their “Wyeth and Berry” bar combines creamy white chocolate with dried cranberries, pistachios and almonds. The label reads: “Some say that white chocolate isn’t chocolate at all. That’s weird, why does ours contain 35 percent cacao?” Good question.

Then again, the brothers are full of questions, like why can’t chocolate be as enjoyable to look at as it is to eat? Hand-wrapped in beautiful Italian paper and sealed with the brothers’ signature gold sticker, it can and is. Turning the tables last Saturday, I asked them a question of my own. Didn’t they have a charming anecdote for me, something to sum up their debut business venture together? There was a little pause. Michael, shame-facedly: “Yeah, well, we’re still kind of working on the whole PR thing.” He nudged my bars across the counter and smiled.

Full Article: "Notable Edibles"

The New York Times

2008-03-16T10:52:00.002-04:00

Leaving Behind the Trucker Hat

By Allen Salkin

THEIR Carhartts are no longer ironic. Now they have real dirt on them.

Until three years ago, Benjamin Shute was living in Williamsburg, where he kept Brooklyn Lager in his refrigerator and played darts in a league.

Raised on the Upper East Side by a father who is a foundation executive and a mother who writes about criminal justice, Mr. Shute graduated from Amherst and worked for an antihunger charity. But something nagged at him. To learn about food production, he had volunteered at a farm in Massachusetts. He liked the dirt, the work and the coaxing of land long fallow into producing eggplant and garlic.

He tried growing strawberries on his roof in Brooklyn, but it didn’t scratch his growing itch.

And so last week, Mr. Shute could be found here, elbow-deep in wet compost two hours north of New York City, filling greenhouse trays for onion seeds. Along with a partner, Miriam Latzer, he runs Hearty Roots, a 25-acre organic farm.

“I never thought I wanted to farm,” Mr. Shute said. “But it feels like an honest living.”

His partner, Ms. Latzer (the two are not a couple) is 33 and a former urban planner. Her parents, a professor and a librarian, “think its crazy that I’m a farmer,” she said. “They wonder what planet I came from.”

This one. Steeped in years of talk around college campuses and in stylish urban enclaves about the evils of factory farms (see the E. coli spinach outbreaks), the perils of relying on petroleum to deliver food over long distances (see global warming) and the beauty of greenmarkets (see the four-times-weekly locavore cornucopia in Union Square), some young urbanites are starting to put their muscles where their pro-environment, antiglobalization mouths are. They are creating small-scale farms near urban areas hungry for quality produce and willing to pay a premium.

“Young farmers are an emerging social movement,” said Severine von Tscharner Fleming, 26, who is making a documentary called “The Greenhorns” about the trend.

While this is hardly the first time that idealistic young people wanted to get back to the garden, the current crop have advantages over their forebears from the 1960s and 70s, many of whom, inspired by the Whole Earth Catalog or Wendell Berry’s books about agrarian values, headed to the country, only to find it impossible to make a living.

But the growing market for organic and locally grown produce is making it possible for well-run small farms to thrive, said Ken Meter, 58, who studies the economics of food as an analyst at the Crossroads Resource Center, a nonprofit advocacy group for local food initiatives that is based in Minnesota.

“A lot of people in our 20s went to the land and wanted to farm and had a lot of enthusiasm, but not many resources,” he said. “It has only been the last five years where the payment from working your fingers to the bone and supplying urban markets with high-quality produce has been enough where you could imagine making a living.”

Whether young, first-generation farmers constitute a flood or trickle is difficult to say. But many long-time observers of small farms say they have noticed an increase in recent years among college graduates who want to farm, even if they intern at established farms or rent tiny parcels.

“We’ve had a big spike in the last decade and especially in the last few years of people who are new to farming applying to sell at Greenmarket,” said Gabrielle Langholtz, manager of special projects for the Manhattan-based Greenmarket, which runs 46 farmers’ markets around the city. “Maybe they went to liberal arts schools and read Michael Pollan,” she said, referring to the author of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals,” (Penguin Press HC, 2006), “and shopped at farmers markets and said, ‘I’m going to buy a farm upstate and sell to Greenmarket.’ ” The typical size of farms that sell at Greenmarket is 50 to 100 acres, she said.

Nationally, there were 8,493 certified organic farms in 2005, using just over 4 million acres of land, more than double the acreage in 2000, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. (The federal government introduced a uniform standard for organic certification in 2002.) New York had more than twice as many certified organic farms, 735, in 2007 as it did in 2004, according to the state Department of Agriculture and Markets. The agency estimates there are three to five times that many organic farms in New York which, like Hearty Roots, choose not to spend the $500 to $1,000 it costs to become certified.

Put that together with research indicating organic farmers are on average 46 years old, compared with an average of 52 for all farmers, and the numbers seem to reflect what experts say they see in the field: the demand from consumers for food produced on a small scale, bought directly from farmers, has allowed a younger generation to enter farming, even as global markets drive many conventional farmers off the land.

“It has opened up a better opportunity than we’ve had in a while for entry-level farmers,” said Stephen R. Gliessman, a professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who studies sustainable agriculture. He said many of his students in recent years have started farms after graduation.

When Mr. Shute led a seminar called, “So you want to be a farmer?” in December in New York, it was standing room only with over 40 people, he said.

Just a few years ago the prevailing style statement in Williamsburg featured metrosexually groomed urbanites wearing trucker hats and pristine Carhartt jackets and quaffing Pabst beer. Now some are choosing the real life behind the pose.

At a recent fund-raising party for Ms. Fleming’s film, in a warehouse next to the Williamsburg Bridge, men in shaggy beards and women in thick sandals sipped Sixpoint Lager from mason jars and snacked on Crane Mountain chèvre.

Guests included Rachel Mark and Betsy Devine, who own Salvatore Brooklyn, a cheese maker in Boerum Hill, and Rick and Michael Mast, tall brothers with Amish-length beards, who are starting a chocolate factory in Williamsburg.

The Billyburg scene has changed, said Annaliese Griffin, who contributes to a blog called Grocery Guy. “Having a cool cheese in your fridge has taken the place of knowing what the cool band is, or even of playing in that band,” she said. “Our rock stars are ricotta makers.”

When John Bliss and Stacy Brenner, both 34, first moved to Maine to farm seven years ago — Mr. Bliss from Tucson, and Ms. Brenner from Philadelphia — they knew little about farming.

“My lesson learned from that first year was that if the soil is good, it won’t let you down,” Mr. Bliss said.

On their Broadturn Farm, in Scarborough, they plan to raise sheep, chickens, pigs and turkeys along with vegetables this year. Like many new organic farms, Broadturn uses the Community Supported Agriculture model to survive. Such businesses sell food subscriptions that entitle consumers to weekly boxes of produce in season. Broadturn’s 20-week subscription costs $500.

Mr. Bliss and Ms. Brenner moved to their current site last year after winning a bid to rent a parcel on the outskirts of Portland controlled by a land trust seeking to preserve open space.

A similar set-up is what allowed Ian Calder-Piedmonte, a philosophy major from Cornell University, to join three years ago with a former classmate who had started Balsam Farms on 60 acres on the South Fork of Long Island. For about $150 an acre, they lease town land across from East Hampton high school, and the Peconic Land Trust leases them acreage in Amagansett, where they operate a farm stand on Town Lane.

“If we can find affordable housing, which is a challenge in East Hampton,” said Mr. Piedmont, 28, who spent two years in Italy after graduation, “we’re going to have two interns this summer.”

Although publications like Small Farmer’s Journal, published since 1976, often present the life of the small farmer in a heartwarmingly “Little House on the Prairie” light, a recent article in Sheep! about the dangers of jackals and one in Backyard Poultry about preventing chickens’ drinking water from freezing, are a reminder of the old-school risks of farming.

“We lost all of our soybeans last year to Japanese beetles,” Ms. Latzer said. She often wakes up at 5 a.m. and collapses into an exhausted sleep by 9 p.m. She earns enough to afford health insurance, but if the landlord doesn’t renew their five-year lease, the enterprise could become untenable.

A number of colleges have added organic farming classes because of demand from students. “A lot of them come out and realize they’re not cut out for it,” said John Biernbaum, a professor of horticulture in Michigan State’s new one-year certificate program. Last year, the first, there were 9 students. This year, 18.

Some feel the strong tug of the land. On March 1, KayCee Wimbish, 32, a former second-grade teacher, moved from her Harlem apartment up to Tivoli to raise sheep and chickens with Owen O’Connor, 22, a Wesleyan dropout who helped come up with the name of their enterprise, Awesome Farm.

Ms. Wimbish grew up in Tulsa, Okla., a child of the suburbs, and it wasn’t until she moved to New York that she discovered farmers’ markets and the politics of food. She worked the last two summers at Hearty Roots and became hooked on the agrarian life. “Moving to New York City,” she said, “was what first got me interested in food and farming.”

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