At Night

Sometimes it takes more than 3 tries to get something right. On our 6th attempt our latest Thursday PM "Schnack at Night" really took off. Although mostly still populated by friends and co-workers of DJ Zebra Blood, the room was full and I think everyone was happy we abandoned $1 hot dogs for the "full menu." In fact, we have been getting more and more post-11pm business since we are now open every night til 1am.

What else is new? The press we received from NY Mag has really had a great impact and we are even getting people traveling from outside of Brooklyn (e.g., Manhattan, Queens and LI).

Schnack Invasion

Since New York Mag has said such nice things about us, we have been busy. Yesterday we stopped doing deliveries and some take-outs so we could concentrate on keeping the quality of our cooked-to-order food top notch!

We also had a visit from Mary Schnack (from AZ) and a contingent of Brooklyn Schnacks!  Many thanks again to Todd who has linked to us from his web site, www.schnack.com
Are you a Schnack? Got ID? Get a free Beer! (Must be 21 or older and visit our "famous" Red Hook location ;) )

People have asked whose ice cream we use?  It's Perry's.

New York Mag

Try searching for Schnack here.. an nice review and a great picture by Ken Chen.

or find us on this page..

They write:  "Screw Mickey D’s. we ought to sue the pants off Alan Harding before we burst another seam. At his kitschy new burger joint, he’s created a kind of fantasy-junk-food camp for middle-aged Augustus Gloops. Just look at the evidence: the Schnäckie, Harding’s take on the slider. Cute name. Only 1.5 ounces of freshly ground beef on a house-baked minibun. Seems harmless enough, right? Wrong. You’ll want twelve, minimum. Need more proof? How about spicy fries, big fat onion rings, eight kinds of hot dogs and kielbasa, and a homemade Orange Julius for chrissakes, and nothing over eight bucks? And Schnäck’s Asian-inspired idea of diet food? Crazy-sounding specials like knockwurst and bacon in a Japanese coconut-curry sauce with rice. C’mon. If that’s not a class-action lawsuit waiting to happen, we don’t know what is."

We had a fairly busy Saturday, but since more and more of our business is coming in later and later in the day, we have changed our hours again. We hope and expect to keep these hours through the end of the summer and then evaluate things at that point once we get firmly into the fall.

Our new hours are 11am to 1am (that's when the kitchen is open and accepting orders). Last call will be at 1:30 and we will close at 2am.

Many thanks to KG for coming in and ordering 12 Schnackies to go, and inviting the Schnack crew to his party.

Last night was our first @ Night party on Thursdays.  It was more popular than those we had on Saturdays. Mostly, however, friends and fans of DJ Zebra Blood.. We will continue the parties throughout the summer.

Starting Sunday our hours will be from 11am to 2am, with the kitchen open from 11am to 1am, last call at 1:30am.

It's a bit of a long shot but we are working on a hot dog eating contest. We will require that the dogs actually be eaten!

The final decision has been made. Starting July 20th, we are changing our hours... Currently we are open from 10am to 11pm. After July 20th we will try staying open a lot longer into the evening and see if people continue to come in. We will open at 11am and the kitchen will stay open til 1am, last call at 1:30, and we will close at 2am.  If it works we will stay open like that throughout the year.

More tidbits:

Alan's TV show, formerly known as "The Real Food Show," is now known as "Cooking in Brooklyn." I have to update the website with the new show name.

The "Schnack Partners" met on Thursday to review our status after almost 3 months in business. Things have been good and steady. Our current plan, however, is to nearly abandon breakfast and concentrate on the late night crowd which is the most growing part of our business. We have a lot of plans to work out and we have to communicate this to the team, but our current plans are by mid-July to be open and taking orders from from 11am to 1am, with the dining room closing at 1:30am. On Thursdays the dining room will remain open later with Schnack at Night.

After more work by Mike and a taste test by Zack (who said he liked both of them), we have replaced our "old" curry mix with a new one. It starts off sweet and ends up spicy and it goes with everything! At 50 cents for 2 oz. it's a "bargain!"

Curry Burgers
Turkey Curry
Curry Knockwurst
Curry Tofu Ruben
Curry Veg Plate
Curry and Fries

You get the idea!

Pictures

Over the last few weeks we have been taking pictures of people at Schnack. They will be posted soon on the main site!! Keep reading here for details!

Super big Schnack thanks to Todd Schnack who just put a link to our site on his site, http://www.schnack.com/

Schnack At Night

DJ Zebra Blood and I decided that Saturday nights are not working for Schnack at this point. So we are going to try moving Schnack at Night to Thursday. So starting July 17th we will be open on Thursday nights from 11:30pm to 2:00am.....the same music, beer, and dogs!

Wow, a bunch of time has gone by since the last entry. A lot of things have gone on. Most importantly our air conditioner was installed and I can report after several weeks that it is working well.

We have run through a few of Alan's specials. The most popular seems to be the huge salad with two fennel sausages. The current special is a quad burger on French bread with mozzarella and marinara.

We also had Mike work on the base for a curry sauce for us. It's not perfected yet. I want it a bit sweeter and less acidic but you can still come in and taste the "work in progress." We have been selling sides of it for 50 cents (2 oz). It's great on fries, Schnackies, and the turkey.

We are also running a veggie special. Vegan duck with POD (Potato of the Day) and sauteed veggies with a choice of marinara or curry sauce.

Another week has come and gone so quickly I can't believe it... Our weekend special will be fried tuna cakes and a small mixed chopped salad and POD (Potatoes of the Day!).

The big news is Schnack At Night, will be starting this Saturday!! 11:30pm to 2am -- Hot Dogs, Cold Beer and Music.

We had a busy Monday, and a few glitches like a new waitress who showed up at 11am instead of 9am and had to leave by 12:30. Steve (the elder) stepped into the breach and pulled a double shift on about 4 hours of sleep. While I was off on Tuesday, Alan, our electrician, and with some help from Brent, installed a 35,000 BTU air conditioner above "table 5." It really cools the place down but it blows hard enough to make it difficult to put some specials up on the wall!

We have been running a sloppy joe-like special called Sloppy Schanck, a huge spicy plate of beef and vegetable saute. Jubilat didn't make the Knockwurst for us this week so I'm running their "jumbo" knock; I took the last of the skinnier ones and some bacon and made Japanese style coconut curry special, served of course over Japanese rice. Now of course Curry, Knockwurst and Bacon may never have appeared in the same recipe before.. but they work well together. Besides, Mrs Lee at the market next door loves it!

Shaun from RangeMaster showed up today about 5pm and fixed our oven. It has a new pilot and some other new parts and all is good in Schnackland. We had been forced to bake off some pork earlier today at the Red Rail. Starting tomorrow we will have Cheesecake with Caramel Lemon sauce! We may bake off another banana/chocolate bread pudding again as well.

While it was a bit of a slow night at Schnack, we saw plenty of old friends stop by. Mitch and his mom, Rhonda, stopped by for dueling Reubens; one with tofu and one with Pastrami. Zack, known to many as the video guy at Pegasus, is off to NC for a week of consulting.

The good news is we added a Chocolate Shake special with Banana for $3.75, and Alan's special for the weekend is a huge salad w/ two knockwurst! A great deal at $7.50; like many of our other specials, Zack was the first to try the salad knockwurst combination. He loved it.

Gravy and French Fries -- the true golden combination. In the full flush of my teenage youth (age 14) I spent 5 weeks biking through the Canadian Maritime, and on a treeless wind swept isle 8 hours deep into the North Atlantic near white sand beaches an older lady in a small shack of a building sold Fries with Onion Sauce. A light, creamy, runny, tan gravy filled with dark specs of carmelized onion. I've asked Mike to work on the Schnack version. Ours, if we ever make it, will be a bit more spicy and intense.

Last night I was inspired to do all of this by a customer who ordered a plate of large fries and a side of Sausage Gravy! He is traveling into the Maritime and I've asked him to report back on whatever gravy he encounters.

In the meantime, Brandon, who is a rather regular-regular has suggested we run banana and chocolate milkshakes -- I'm working out the details for that next week.

Another day another link.. We are listed now in the Brooklyn Blog Directory. We are, as of today, one of the 5 most recently added Brooklyn Blogs and thus are mentioned on their main page The listing says, "It's A Schnack Life: At 122 Union St, is a small Hot Dog joint called Schnack; It sits on Union St, the "Gateway to Redhook." This is the Schnack Blog! | 6/5/2003 12:24:17 PM"

It was a rainy day in Brooklyn which slowed us down a bit.. but we saw plenty of old friends coming in for some beer and burgers.

We are currently running a few specials. We had some extra ground turkey and so we are doing some turkey schnackies. Alan made up some strawberry shortcake and with very minor help from Alan, Doug did a second batch of his "Sausage Gravy."

Now they are saying the stove/oven repair guy will not be around until Monday. We made up a batch of brownies anyway and "grilled" them by covering the baking pan w/ foil and heating it on the griddle. They came out good! We still need to make another cheesecake but that will have to wait until the oven is ready.

Last night was the second Friday night in a row that we did a great late night business. Last Friday at 11pm we had 20 people in the room. Yesterday we had even more. So we kept our doors and phone lines open until 11:30 and the last people left around 11:50. If this keeps up we will change our hours on Friday and stay open til Midnight.

DJ Zebra Blood and Alan finally got a chance to meet last night; this completed the circle of bringing everyone into the loop on "Schnack At Night."

We are still having some problems with our oven and I've asked Mike to work on an alternative dessert if we are unable to bake more cheesecake and brownies.

More notes about us on the web..

From the May section of http://www.manhattani.com, we find, "Schnack 122 Union St., Red Hook Brooklyn, 718-855-2879 : Owned and operated by Alan Harding of “Patois” in Cobble Hill, this casual spot serves beer, milkshakes and burgers."

Not much else to report. We moved forward more on our "Red Hook Disco Road House." We are working on a special menu which will cover the regular menu so there isn't any confusion, and we are also thinking about making a "Schnack At Night" sign for the window so that everyone can see it isn't just the regular old Schnack..

A lot of "drama" at Schnack in the last few days.. The biggest is our new menu is out and we have thousand of copies ready to hand out to those who want to take them home so they can get Schnack take-out.

One of our waiters has been going through a rough time and he didn't show up for work today. I was set to cook a double shift but I had to move in to fill the waiter position.  But Doug, on a few hours of sleep, (not expecting to work until Thurs or Fri) stepped up to the plate and worked the double for me. I did the morning table waiting until Chris took over at 4:30.

We also got in the first 10 lbs of our new Fennel Sausage. It's being made for us by our butcher to our specifications. I wanted something that's not like every other Italian sausage in the area, and Alan wanted it to be thin. I had been planning on baking the sausage until it was par-cooked but the oven was in need of repair (more drama). I par-boiled some and it tastes great, although it does have some "spice" to it.. for me a medium amount. In the process of cooking it and making our portions of it, we ended up with some trimmings.

Taking full advantage of Doug's time spent in The South and on oil rigs, I jumped at his suggestion that we use them to make a sausage gravy, thus creating our first special of the day for our new menu.. Two thin Fennel Sausage links over white bread toast with Sausage Gravy (with a side of "potato of the day.")   Yummy pork fat, spices, and starch!!

I'm hoping that Mike runs it tomorrow over grits or something like that.

We are testing the new page for Schnack At Night... I'd love your e-mailed comments if you like this test page:

http://www.schnackdog.com/atnight

We had a great Monday. Doug, who has been training with us for a while on the grill/griddle did his first solo run with breakfast/lunch today. He rated himself as doing a C+ job but it was better than that for sure. Everyone was happy. Also, Steve, who had a recent death in his family was back at work today working the evening shift.

We have been selling the bread pudding and it has been going really fast, and everyone seems to like Mike's Caramel Lemon Sauce!!

Our new menus will be ready to be picked up at the printer's tomorrow, so we should have them ready to be handed out by Wednesday when we switch to that menu.

We taste tested our new "fennel" sausage made for us specially by one of the butchers we use. It's heavy on the fennel with some added imported cheese and a nice spicy kick at the end. We let about a dozen customers try it as well and they liked it... They are currently making up a batch of 10 lbs for us for Wednesday.

We had our busiest morning ever at Schnack, in part to a large take-out order and a rather full dining room of people in search of BRUNCH.

Tomorrow we are putting some banana/chocolate bread pudding on as a special; we are expecting to serve it with a lemon caramel sauce.

What else? We are briefly mentioned in an article about food in the St. Petersburg Times.

They say, "Throughout the city, the hip hunger for simpler eats further down the price chain has foodies crazy for sandwiches. One chef won attention last year for closing a gourmet restaurant to give New Yorkers cheese steaks in the style of Philadelphia and south Jersy. Now there are foodie ventures such as Grilled Cheese or Peanut Butter & Co. and hot dog specialists at Crif Dogs and Schnack"