Hoyt cuisine
Start your lunch search at this Brooklyn stop
For most restaurants in Downtown Brooklyn — where the 2 line makes a stop at Hoyt St. — lunch is still the busiest meal of the day. That’s why these three spots make sure to offer some of the city’s best sandwiches.
Peter Entner and Michael Kogan went to the same southeast Brooklyn high school, but they didn’t meet until both were working as professional chefs: Kogan at his own catering company, and Entner at his famously funky, nowclosed Prospect Heights pizza shop, PeteZaaz.
Now they run the seven-month-old sandwich shop called BOOMwich, where Entner says their differing styles — his is “out there,” while Kogan’s is more Mediterranean, thanks to a few years cooking in Italy — make for sandwich collaborations that push the boundaries as much as Entner’s coconut-crusted fried tofu pizzas ever did.
The latter reappears in the Cocoto sandwich ($9), a messy masterpiece where the tofu, herb-chili coconut sauce, fermented lychee and fresh pea shoots and bean sprouts provide complexity and crunch. There’s also the Boom Ballwich ($10), where dense, flavorful meatballs snuggle up with tomato sauce and soft sautéed broccoli rabe; and “Smashys,” cheese sandwiches ($9) with fillings like chorizo, peppadew relish and chipotle gouda that get flattened after they’re toasted in the partners’ beloved TurboChef conveyor oven.
All sandwiches come on Tom Cat Bakery pretzel rolls; you can also order any of them as a salad. As for the eatery’s name, it comes from Entner’s custommade boombox, which hangs in the window.
BOOMwich: 311 Atlantic Ave. near Smith St., Brooklyn; (718) 643-9229