Superfine Still Has It

Superfine

Gothamist declared Superfine a restaurant/bar with staying power, for good reason. It’s their go-to bar in Dumbo with a free pool table, where the “food is uniformly good”. It’s been open for 10 years, just weeks after ‘9/11’ in 2001 by Laura Taylor, Tanya Rynd and Cara Lee Sparry co-owners of Superfine. They all met in the 1990s while living in an old illegal Dumbo warehouse on Jay Street. Before the current location of Superfine, they ran Between The Bridges Pub on the corner of Adams and York Street (where Beacon Tower now stands), and before that, the bar was called “Haggerty’s” until the 1960s.

As Edible Brooklyn explains:

Taylor had tired of the cutthroat competitiveness of New York City professional kitchens, and was hoping to work for herself and her friends. So the three hatched a plan to start an underground supper club, inviting 50 people who could each bring a guest. Taylor’s food was sourced from the farmers market, while Rynd and Sparry took care of live music, art installations and a midnight cabaret. The overall goal—beyond great food, says Rynd—was to get people talking.

That they did, and when the three were offered a chance to take over the grungy, neglected kitchen of the former neighborhood steelworkers’ bar called Between the Bridges, they took it, cleaning the space of its century-old fried-on grime, serving sandwiches and fries and hosting street fairs they called the Urban Cowgirl Cabaret Café.

The food is a derivative of Alice Waters’ slow food local and organic cooking and some entree items change monthly, while keeping their ‘famous’ pork chops, spaghettini, or grilled portobello sandwich (for example see menu photos from Sept 2008 and Oct 2009). This is one of the few restaurants in Dumbo that consistently serves quality food.

Superfine
126 Front Street, Brooklyn NY 11201
(718) 243-9005
Bar open Sun.-Thu. until 2 a.m.; Fri.-Sat. until 4 a.m.

Related:
{Still Got It: Superfine, 08May2011, Gothamist}
{One of the borough’s best-kept secrets, Summer 2009, Edible Brooklyn}
{Dumbo Then and Now: NE Corner of York/Adams, 15Aug2008}
{Superfine Review, 06Jul2009, Brownstoner}
{Superfine Review, Yelp}

20 Comment