"Lori Jayne is named after the owner Sam Braverman’s mom, who taught him how to fry chicken. (Thank you, Lori Jayne.) Sam's spot is basically just a tiny kitchen tucked into the back of Bushwick’s Alphaville bar—but the cooking coming out of there is better than what you'll find at a lot of full-service restaurants. Just try the $20 steak frites. They're doused in a sichuan peppercorn-heavy au poivre, draped over a pile of fries, and served in a paper tray usually reserved for fries at a baseball game. With chopsticks. If they put this on an artisanal plate made in the Hudson Valley they could probably charge double, and we’d probably still pay. But we much prefer eating it perched at the bar with a frozen strawberry-basil margarita, or crowded into a wooden booth. We'd happily spend several hours here, even without the $10 burgers. photo credit: Alex Staniloff photo credit: Alex Staniloff photo credit: Alex Staniloff Food Rundown photo credit: Alex Staniloff Steak Frites Steak for $20 could be totally average and we'd still find it notable. But the steak here is anything but average. Thinly sliced with a hard crust on the outside and a ruby red center, the roughly 5 oz cut of chuck flap comes on a bed of golden brown fries, smothered in an au poivre sauce that tingles with sichuan peppercorn. They’re technically a special, but it’s the sort of special that's such a cult-favorite you can depend on it being available almost every night. photo credit: Alex Staniloff Burger The burger here is $10, with $1 more for cheese, and we’d recommend going for with the cheese. It’s served on a potato roll, with an inch-thick patty of impeccably seasoned beef, tangy dill pickle chips, and onions caramelized in bone broth, so that they lean more salty than sweet. photo credit: Alex Staniloff Chicken Nuggets The chicken nuggets at Lori Jayne are made out of real chicken, and actually taste like it. Momentous. They’re a great drinking food, especially when you order them doused in housemade Buffalo sauce. photo credit: Alex Staniloff Cocktails Alphaville is the kind of bar where you might ingest several beer-shot combos and then learn how to line-dance, but it also has great cocktails. Things that sound like they could be sickeningly sweet—like that frozen strawberry-basil margarita, or a raspberry whiskey sour—are perfectly balanced, and highly drinkable." - Willa Moore
