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 heritage 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 buoyant 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 partner, who serves as the general manager and beverage director. Hence a rotating selection of fresh pastas (mafaldine, rigatoni, ricotta cavatelli) and sauces (lamb ragù, Bolognese, pumpkin-seed pesto), and a recent weekly dinner special featuring pork meatballs in spicy marinara over creamy polenta, with a pickled vegetable, 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 describes as “the flavor-to-value ratio” of beloved and inexpensive New York establishments such as the tiny Lower East Side Henan restaurant Spicy Village—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.) ♦
