Five Essential Dishes From Clinton St. Baking Co., a New York Classic

Even so, there are some sleeper hits that don’t involve pancakes on the menu, Kleinberg says. “My email address is ‘great biscuits,’ so yeah, I make really good biscuits,” he says. Sometimes he’ll send over an order to a table as a teaser for what you could — and should — order next time.

We sat down with Kleinberg to chat about the American South, potato pancakes, regular pancakes (of course), and all those sleeper hits. Here, in his own words, are five essential dishes to order from Clinton St. Baking Co.

1. Fried Chicken and Waffles

Cage-free chicken breast with honey Tabasco sauce, crispy Belgian vanilla buttermilk waffle, signature warm maple butter

“This has become one of our most popular dishes. It’s an ode to our Southern roots; in Georgia and certain other parts of the South they make fried chicken and waffles. It’s this sweet and savory combination, the waffle with maple syrup and fried chicken. It’s one of our best sellers and it’s an amazing dish: crispy and sweet, spicy and savory. A lot of people order it for dinner, too.

“The waffle is an invention of mine born from our famous pancake dish, which I’ll get to down the road, but it’s a version of that batter with the addition of sourdough. There’s some sourdough starter in it, which makes the waffle really crispy, but also savory and a bit tangy. We cook the waffles nice and crispy so that when the chicken and garnishes go on top, it doesn’t get wilted or soggy.

“We sprinkle a little vanilla sugar on top of the batter before we close the waffle iron. It caramelizes and gives it that crispy coating on top. It’s a really nice nuance.

“For the fried chicken, we use a boneless skinless chicken breast. It’s natural white meat, no antibiotics or preservatives. We marinate them in a buttermilk mixture overnight, tenderize them. We dredge it in a little flour, cornmeal, and traditional fried chicken seasonings like black pepper, cayenne, chile powder, and a little onion powder. Then, we fry them until they’re crispy.

“Years ago, we came up with this honey Tabasco that we serve with our fried chicken dinner. It’s sweet and spicy, and we drizzle it over the fried chicken before it goes out. To top it all off, we serve the chicken and waffles with a side of maple butter, the famous sauce that goes on all of our pancakes and waffles and French toast. A little bit of chives go on top for color, and it’s out the door.

“We just changed our beverage menu for the spring and summer, and we have this new prosecco that is amazing. It’s nice and dry and it goes great with the fried chicken and waffles. It’s kind of like having a delicious alcoholic soda with your fried chicken.”

2. Latke Benedict

Poached eggs, house-smoked salmon, classic hollandaise, trout roe caviar over crispy potato pancakes

“This was a compilation of our — Dede [Lahman] and my — Jewish heritage and the fact that we’re famous for our pancakes. We serve them two ways: three pieces, crispy on the outside, tender in the middle, with homemade applesauce or sour cream. The other version we do is a take on eggs Benedict, but instead of using bread or an English muffin as the bottom, we use a potato pancake.

“We make hundreds of latkes per day. We sell them as side orders, but we also sell a lot as Benedicts. We use a little matzo meal in the mix, which is another Jewish element, along with some seasoning and spices that make them very savory and delicious.

“Over that goes a beautiful big slice of our house-smoked salmon. It’s a little similar to a Nova salmon; it’s not too salty, but nice and smoky. We cure it for three or four days in brown sugar, peppercorns, and all kinds of seasonings. After it cures, we cold smoke it; it’s a four- or five-day process. We hand slice it very thinly over the latkes.

“On top of that, we make two perfectly poached eggs and add a ladle of hollandaise sauce. To garnish is the pièce de résistance: trout caviar, which is unbelievably savory and pops in your mouth like little beads of deliciousness. It’s a real iconic New York Jewish experience.”

3. Pancakes

Wild Maine blueberry, banana walnut, or chocolate chunk

“Our wild Maine blueberry pancakes are my baby. I’ve been developing this recipe and using it for 25 years. It’s just great technique and great ingredients: great butter, great eggs, great sugar, great vanilla.

“It’s not too sweet, which is what I like about our pancakes. The sweetness comes from the fruit that we use in our garnish and the maple butter that brings out all of the flavor. It’s just a great foundational batter.

“One of the most important things is the technique of making them on the griddle. We only cook them in clarified butter, which gives them a nice, crispy ring around the outside but keeps them very fluffy and soft on the inside. We also never mix ingredients into our batter; we add them when the batter is already halfway cooked on the griddle.

“For the blueberry pancakes, we use blueberries that are wild and from Maine; they’re smaller and a little more tart and they produce this really nice juice that we use for our blueberry sauce. They’re evenly dispersed into each pancake.

“We serve pancakes in stacks of threes. We don’t serve single pancakes; we’ve been vigilant about that for years. We do a stack of three and that’s it. No silver dollar pancakes, or any of that bulls**t. Just a signature stack of three.

“We put a small ladle of blueberry sauce on the top that we make from scratch with sugar, vanilla, lemon zest and peel, and butter. We cook that all together and serve it warm on the side and a little dollop on the stack. We hit it with some powdered sugar and our maple butter on the side. You feel like you’re in a log cabin in Maine.”

4. Spicy Shrimp and Cheese Grits

With fried green tomatoes, creamy Creole sauce, and white corn grits

“This is another nod to Southern heritage. Dede’s dad is from Atlanta and so, in the early days of Clinton St., we did a few dishes as a kind of homage to American Southern cooking. The shrimp and grits is on our nighttime menu, and it’s just one of my favorite things to eat.

“Cheese grits are the base; the foundation is white cornmeal grits. They’re cooked with a little milk and salt and pepper, and they’re very savory and creamy. We finish them with a good helping of Monterey Jack cheese and some cheddar. People who know and understand grits love ours. They’re addicting; you don’t always expect that nice cheesy flavor in them.

“Then there’s the shrimp. We use really great under 12-sized shrimp, usually from either Mexico or South America. They cook up really pink and beautiful with their tails on. We deglaze the pan with our Creole barbecue base. It’s an homage to Emeril Lagasse, to the barbecue shrimp you can get down in the south. It has shrimp stock, Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, garlic, onion, garlic, and black pepper cooked and strained into a broth. We finish it with a little heavy cream, butter, lemon juice, salt, and pepper, so it becomes this beautiful golden sauce with the shrimp.

“Then we do our fried green tomatoes, another ode to the South. It’s an unripe tomato that’s very hard and sliced into a kind of onion ring. It’s breaded in cornmeal, flour, and panko breadcrumbs. Then we chill them, fry them, and they get really nice and tender in the middle. It’s a nice crunchy counterpart to the shrimp and grits. There’s some gravy on the dish and some chives on top, and we’re done.”

5. Salmon Burger

With avocado, sliced tomato, arugula, and tartar sauce on a toasted Clinton St. bun, with coleslaw and a LES barrel cured pickle. Choice of fries or dressed greens.

“I was either going to talk about this or the cheeseburger. A lot of places are known for their burgers, and we don’t get as much kudos for that, but I really love it because we make ours in house. I wanted to talk about salmon, though, because it’s one of our dinner staples and people really love it, especially with the popularity of veggie and non-beef burgers.

“We wanted another fish option on our menu and since we smoke salmon in house, we already had fresh salmon. We’re utilizing a lot of byproducts of the smoked salmon — the trimmings and scraps, and also all the good parts of the fish. There’s a beautiful way of scraping the bones with fresh salmon, kind of like when you see sushi chefs break down an amazing raw tuna. That’s the modus operandi for our salmon burger.

“We use 80% of our fresh ground, fresh salmon and 20% of the smoked salmon scraps in the mix. That makes it really delicious; it gives it a little salt and a little texture. It’s not bland like it would be if we just ground up fish and made a burger from it.

“Then, we add shallots, chives, lemon zest, a bit of olive oil, and some hot sauce. We form them into nice six-inch patties. Usually at dinner time, we will sell out of this. For garnish, we make our own tartar sauce in house, of course. Cornichons, capers, red onion, salt, pepper, lemon juice, and mayonnaise make a really nice tartar sauce that goes on the toasted homemade Kaiser roll. We brush the roll with butter and toast it on the griddle. Then, the sauce, a slice of beefsteak tomato, a few slices of avocado, and some arugula. We serve it with some mixed mesclun greens and our famous coleslaw that Dede married me for. It’s beautiful, delicious, and smoky — all the things.”

Clinton St. Baking Co. is open for brunch Monday through Sunday from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. and for dinner Wednesday through Saturday from 5:30 to 10 p.m.

Ellie Plass is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn. Follow her on Instagram and X. Follow Resy, too.