THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY8, 2021 11
PHOTOGRAPH BY COURTNEY SOFIAH YATES FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE
1
TABLESFORTWO
Rolo’s
853 Onderdonk Ave., Queens
I’ve always thought of hot dogs, which
I love, as inextricably tied to particular,
and Pavlovian, places in New York City:
plucked from a cart’s steamy water near
Central Park; encased in ruffled paper and
savored, with frothy papaya juice, while
standing in the window of Gray’s Papaya,
gazing upon Amsterdam Avenue; paired
with crinkle-cut fries and a milkshake at
an umbrella-covered table outside the
original Nathan’s, at Coney Island. The
other night, I inaugurated another New
York hot-dog ritual, in the most unlikely
of locations—my Brooklyn kitchen.
I’d been surprised to see hot dogs on
the menu at Rolo’s, a new restaurant and
grocery store in Ridgewood, Queens,
which seemed to skew Italian, and whose
five partners met at Gramercy Tavern.
But they sounded delicious, a mix of her-
itage pork and organic chicken ground
in-house, seasoned with ginger, pink salt,
white pepper, and milk powder, and sealed
in lamb casings—sausage I wouldn’t mind
seeing made. As I seared them in a cast-
iron pan, they released the happy scent
of bacon, their taut skin growing crisp,
juices sizzling. Sandwiched in toasted
Martin’s potato buns, they anchored one
of the fastest and most satisfying dinners
I’d “cooked” in months, heavy on flavor
(smoke, spice, a medley of fats) and buoy-
ant of spirit.
If Rolo’s has a theme, according to
Howard Kalachnikoff, a partner and a
former Gramercy Tavern chef de cuisine,
it’s less Italian than it is, more broadly,
“New York.” “If you like eating in New
York, there’s a little Italian involved,”
pointed out Ben Howell, another part-
ner, who serves as the general manager
and beverage director. Hence a rotating
selection of fresh pastas (mafaldine, riga-
toni, ricotta cavatelli) and sauces (lamb
ragù, Bolognese, pumpkin-seed pesto),
and a recent weekly dinner special fea-
turing pork meatballs in spicy marinara
over creamy polenta, with a pickled veg-
etable, Kalamata olive, and feta salad.
On the other hand, Kalachnikoff told
me, “we have a certain respect for pizza.
Just because we have a wood-burning
oven doesn’t mean we’re going to make
pizza.” In aiming for what Howell de-
scribes as “the flavor-to-value ratio” of
beloved and inexpensive New York es-
tablishments such as the tiny Lower
East Side Henan restaurant Spicy Vil-
lage—almost nothing at Rolo’s is over
twenty dollars—they’ve landed on “a lot
of our personal favorite comfort foods,”
he said. Paul Wetzel, a partner and a
smoked-meats aficionado, is responsible
for the hot dogs and Wagyu pastrami,
plus the smoked turkey and ham used
in sandwiches made with ciabatta baked
by Kelly Mencin, also a Gramercy alum.
The turkey is paired with pickled
celery, blue cheese, and “fancy sauce”
(ketchup, mayo, mustard, Tabasco, minced
dill pickle, black pepper), the ham with
sharp Cheddar and Dijonnaise. For a
vegan sandwich, thinly sliced fried tofu is
layered with a spicy makrut-lime peanut
sauce, grilled cabbage, and cucumber—an
adaptation of pecel, an Indonesian salad
that Rafiq Salim, another partner, grew
up eating. Salim’s childhood (he was born
in the Netherlands) was also inspiration
for one of Mencin’s excellent pastries:
a hyper-regional Dutch cinnamon roll
called a Zeeuwse bolus, made from a soft
yeasted dough that’s twisted into ropes
and coiled.
Rolo’s, which is open for takeout
and delivery and will expand to outdoor
dining in the spring, is more than seven
years in the making. In 2013, shortly after
selling his textile company to Herman
Miller, Stephen Maharam, a Gramercy
Tavern regular and Rolo’s fifth partner,
encouraged Kalachnikoff to go out on his
own. When the pandemic began, they
were just months away from opening. But
what seemed like uncannily bad timing
has proved something of a gift. Divorced
from the intense pressure of opening a
full-service restaurant overnight, they’ve
had the freedom to experiment, and to
incorporate feedback from a fast-growing
cast of regulars, Howell told me. “We got
to understand what people, and what
we, want out of a neighborhood place.”
(Prepared foods $3.50-$22.)
—Hannah Goldfield
