He’s got the meats
Former Per Se sommelier André Hueston Mack opens a ham-and-wine spot with a Brooklyn edge
WHY blow your paycheck on an elaborate Michelin-starred meal when you could indulge in the star ingredients for a lot less?
That’s the idea behind & Sons — a new charcuterie-focused wine bar in Prospect Lefferts Gardens. Or, as proprietor André Hueston Mack, the former beverage director of Midtown’s vaunted Per Se, likes to call it, a “ham bar.”
“The idea hit me . . . after hosting a Thanksgiving dinner that featured hams and wines,” says Mack, 47. Although grapes are his professional specialty, he’s also something of a meat connoisseur, thanks to a 400-pound, decadesold meat slicer he scored on Craigslist for $7,000 in 2013. “I had a good year and I figured that the pimp s - - t would be to have the slicer in my house,” he says.
With a menu that focuses on
American wines, cheeses and hams, mostly from the South, Mack hopes to rescue stateside pigs from culinary purgatory.
“Everybody talks s - - t about American country ham,” says Mack, who published a book last year, “99 Bottles: A Black Sheep’s Guide to Life-Changing Wines” (Abrams), and owns Maison Noir Wines, a wine producer in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.
But after a stretch of “buying the best legs of jambon from Spain” for dinner parties, “I ran into a farmer who told me that he sells hogs to Italy because they can’t keep up with the demand for prosciutto,” Mack says. “So it turns out that our hogs are good enough for prosciutto.”
Though he eventually developed a burning passion for all things porcine, Mack had a different reason for quitting his coveted gig at Per Se in 2006. His then-girlfriend, now-wife, Phoebe Damrosch, was working on “Service Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter” — a memoir about her stint as Per Se’s service captain.
When word of her book started to spread, “things became uncomfortable,” says Mack. “She was once asked to leave the building . . . The staff was told that if we wanted to speak to her it had to be cleared through p.r.”
Things are less uncomfortable now. Mack, Damrosch and their four sons (hence & Sons) live around the corner from his cozy, 20-seat restaurant. There’s savory, Spanish-style pork from North Carolina; “campfire-smoky” ham from Tennessee; and juicy, nutty prosciutto from Hurleyville, NY. Meats are served in thin cuts — bladed by yet another hand-cranked antique slicer at the front of the bar — with fruit and cheese accompaniments.
As you’d expect from a Per Se wine alum, there are rare vintages — a 1985 cabernet sauvignon goes for $2,500 — but they share the list with $10 by-the-glass pours.
Besides “shining a light on the high quality and good taste of American ham,” the whitetablecloth veteran has another goal: To keep the vibe chill and neighborhood-friendly. Or, as he puts it: “I want this restaurant to feel like an extension of my living room.”