Sublime samsa by the sea
Plus, the ex-Horses kitchen crew resurfaces at Café Triste for a monthlong residency
Good morning, angels! I’ve got some fun news out of L.A. to kick off today’s letter, as I make my way back to New York. Plus, yet another new franchise for you: You Should Eat Here covers places you should be eating at, but no one is talking about—until now :). Today, we’re in Brighton Beach, reflecting on sensational samsa and plushy lepyoshka, still warm from the tandir oven. Also, this letter is sponsored by Squarespace, which means it’s entirely free to read. More below.
The ex-Horses kitchen crew—chef Brittany Ha, pastry chef Hannah Grubba, and sous chef Alex Riley—will be cooking at Chinatown’s beloved wine bar, Café Triste, for the month of February. Their residency, called Bruce (named after Ha’s son), is an opportunity for the trio to keep cooking together following the Hollywood restaurant’s recent closure. Expect bistro food, some of it nodding to Horses classics, but ultimately reimagined for a café setting. The menu will evolve throughout the month. “Obviously, there will be constraints, given that we don’t have a hood, but I’m excited to see what they do with it,” says Reilly Cox, Café Triste’s director of operations.
The residency begins next Wednesday, 2/4, and runs Wednesdays through Fridays throughout February. Reservations are now bookable on Resy.
Some menu highlights:
Oysters and housemade sticky sausages [Editor’s note: one of my all-time favorite sets]
Radicchio agrodolce with a wedge of goat cheese
Cornish hen marinated in annatto
Large-format desserts, like Seville orange cake with salted cream
On the Triste side of the equation, diners can expect table service and plenty of delicious wine, including bottles pulled from their deep cellar to complement Bruce’s menu. On nights when Bruce isn’t in residence, owner Zach Jarrett will be concocting a bistro-y menu to ensure a throughline as the café figures out its next iteration, following the recent departure of former head chef Hannah Chumley.
Speaking of residencies, everyone in the industry—especially in L.A.—is talking about Noma’s arrival on U.S. soil, which I covered for Bon Appétit earlier this week. The $1,500 tickets went on sale Monday and sold out in minutes (although the restaurant loyalty and payments company Blackbird will soon be offering $250 meals at Noma L.A. to members). I’ll have more to say soonas the Copenhagen team ramps up its California operation ahead of their four-month run in Silver Lake.
Hop off the Q or the B train at Brighton Beach station, descend the stairs, and look to your left. A beige-painted building waits right there, its maroon awning printed with Russian words for pilaf (plov), flatbread (lepyoshka), and samsa, all Uzbek specialties. Several businesses share the address at 504 Brighton Beach Avenue, but you’re looking for the red sign advertising Samarkand bread and sambusa. Lean in toward the sliding glass service window beneath it, and you’ll catch sight of a domed clay tandir oven, tiled in gray.
Brighton Tandir is the name of this bakery, and the owners are from Samarkand. They have no website, Instagram, phone number, or Yelp presence. They just barely register on Google, although there’s no public printing of their hours, until now: 7 am to 7 pm daily.
Early in the day, there is lepyoshka—a round white flatbread the size of a small human head, its center punched-in and decorated with an intricate floral pattern. The bread is simple: made of flour, water, salt, and yeast, and tastes like a bagel, but airier and less chewy, with a fluffy crumb and a crispy golden exterior. Lepyoshka is not meant to be cut into, but ripped apart, which you can tell just from looking at it; the bread practically begs you to tear into it, most ideally, minutes after it’s lifted out of the tandir.
Also in the morning, there is the samsa—a laminated Central Asian pastry filled with melting onions and a coarse mince of lamb or beef, spiced with cumin, coriander, and black pepper. One bite sends buttery flakes skittering down your chin as warm, peppery vapor escapes. The crackling crust yields to a soft, juicy center, the pastry steamed from within by the meat. For tang, pour a bit of Brighton Tandir’s house sauce—a bright blend of tomatoes, garlic, dill, and acid—into the folds of the samsa.
By noon, the final offering arrives: pumpkin samsa, the culinary equivalent of a good hug. The filling—sweet, starchy chunks of bright-orange pumpkin combined with a generous amount of silken onions—settles heavier at the base of the pastry than in its meat counterparts, forming a gooey, thick-lipped bottom beneath the samsa’s thin, flaky lid. It tastes like something someone’s mom would insist you try, then finish. She’d be right.
Go, order all four items, bring cash, and arrive at noon if you want the pumpkin (you do).
Brighton Tandir
7 am to 7 pm, daily
504 Brighton Beach Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11235
Speaking of samsa, specifically this samsa, we’re serving it at our wedding in May, just eight miles from the bakery, in Carroll Gardens. David’s dad’s side of the family is from Tajikistan, which shares many of the same foods with neighboring Uzbekistan. Samsa, which his mom makes beautifully at home, has always been meaningful to him, and now it is to me, too.
Which brings me back to Squarespace, where we built our wedding website. We wanted something we could customize simply and beautifully, that would seem like us. Using Squarespace’s easy-to-use tools, we connected our own domain, built a custom color palette, animated yellow tulips drifting down the page, and gathered RSVPs with form blocks. In the end, our site feels like an extension of us, not a cookie-cutter wedding page.
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