Gut Instinct: Pigging Out

  "Baby, let's go to brunch," I said to my girlfriend Sunday morning. She paused Glee and demonstrated the show’s titular emotion. "Really? Where?" "Williamsburg," I said, "to Traif." She tilted her head to the side like our dog, Sammy, when he hears a strange noise. "What's Traif?" That’s a darn good question. Like schtup or schmooze, traif is a Yiddish term. It signifies non-Kosher food, such as shellfish, pigs or dairy mixed with meat. That nixes bacon, scallops and, sadly, cheeseburgers. Like vampires to garlic, a devout Jew would recoil from a bacon cheeseburger. I never kept kosher. As a kid, I seasoned and formed my family’s hamburger patties, then grilled ’em beneath a cheddar blanket. I seared flank steak, serving it with salad topped with blue cheese. I was a terrible, terrible Jew—but lord, traif was downright tasty. It’s a concept grasped by chef Jason Marcus (a Jew!) and his girlfriend, Heather Heuser, who run their pork- and shellfish-heavy restaurant in that South Williamsburg quadrant where hipsters and Hassids commingle. So much for demographic research.

“What am I going to be able to eat?” my girlfriend asked, not unreasonably. After all, a vegetarian shiksa may not find much to munch at Traif (229 S. 4th St., betw. Havemeyer & Roebling Sts., Brooklyn, 347-844-9578). Using the Internet’s black magic, I conjured up the brunch menu. Blocking half of the screen (smoked pork belly, chicken and biscuits, bacon donuts),

I pointed out the baked blueberry pancake, Nutella-stuffed French toast and an egg scramble with ’shrooms and spinach.

“You like spinach and mushrooms,” I pointed out, in case she somehow forgot about two of her favorite foods. “Fine, fine,” she relented. In relationships, uneasy accord is easier than spending the afternoon arguing. Especially when concerning brunch in Williamsburg. It’s a neighborhood of sleepyheads who, by and large, spend the first half of Sunday snoozing off the last half of Saturday night. Arrive for brunch by noon, and you can easily nab a seat. Just not in Traif’s lovely, flowery backyard.

“Sorry, we’re fully committed,” a hostess said. I balled my fists and drove my fingernails into my palms. “Fully committed” is one of my least favorite restaurant phrases, including “How are we doing?” and “Are you still enjoying that?” To me, “fully committed” is formulaic pretension, especially at a casual restaurant decorated by a dainty pig with a cutout heart.

“Stop being a bitter old man and just order,” my girlfriend said, unballing my mitts and guiding me to an open table. I grabbed a menu. For brunch, Traif’s prices are pretty reasonable, with dishes topping out at $10. That’s the same for dinner (mmm… hamachi carpaccio with nectarines, lime and Thai basil), but it’s a tapas-style, small-plates model. That kind of meal could easily bankrupt a man, especially since shoe polishers now earn more than this journalist.

A waitress wandered over, all big glasses and a cheery smile. She filled our cups with water and took our order. My girlfriend, the veggie scramble. Me, the eggin-a-nest and, because I’m hell-bent on a heart attack, bacon donuts with coffee ice cream. “Would you like those served as an appetizer?” the waitress wondered.

“People do that?” I said, as aghast as that teenaged time when I stumbled across a website demonstrating the novel uses of ping-pong balls and latex.

“We’ll save it for dessert,” she said. Perhaps dessert should’ve been an appetizer. Brunch didn’t arrive for upward of 30 minutes. It was mostly worth the wait. The scrambled eggs were rich, creamy and veggie-strewn. The eggin-a-nest comprised dual slices of crisp, thick bread encasing brie and portabellas, with a runny egg nested in the middle like a watery eyeball. It was a decadent carbohydrate gut bomb that left me stuffed and slightly queasy, a sensation amplified by dessert.

“Please point the donuts toward me,” I told the waitress. She spun the fat, irregular orbs of crumbled-bacon-topped fried dough in my direction, angling the lump of slowly melting coffee ice cream toward my girlfriend.

“She doesn’t eat meat,” I explained.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” the waitress said, as if my girlfriend suffered from some fatal disease. Regarding the donuts, I would like to lie to you. I wanted them donuts to sing the swine divine. Sadly, they were just lightly greasy dough set adrift in sweet dulce de leche. The bacon added contrast, not flavor (imitation bacon atop salad, perhaps?), and clashed with the coffee ice cream—and my girlfriend.

“You got bacon in my ice cream,” she bemoaned, flicking a brown pebble aside. I sighed. You can take a shiksa to Traif, but you certainly can’t make them eat pork.