It’s summer, which means our thoughts are on what’s cold, what’s portable and what will give us the energy we need to make it to work every morning in the steamy city heat. Everyone from Blue Bottle to Good Batch to Smorgasburg is hitting our summer must-have list of cold brew, ice cream and dumplings. Here are the essentials for eating and drinking on the move or in your home through Labor Day.
Cold Brew Bottle by Blue Bottle Coffee, $38
The Oakland-born, Bushwick-based coffee innovators are changing the way we drink coffee once again. Their just-released cold brew bottle (which is blue, of course) is a collaboration with Hario, the Japanese company responsible for most of Blue Bottle’s wares. It features a built-in filter, to which the company suggests you add their signature Three Africas blend, and an easy-to-grip silicone cover to be left on for the duration of the eight-hour brew cycle. We suspect this bottle will be getting a lot of use at Prospect Park picnics throughout the summer.
Stillwater Gose Gone Wild Kit by Brooklyn Brew Shop, $40
Stillwater Artisanal is a Baltimore meets Brooklyn microbrewer with no brewery of their own, so their home-brewing kits can help you get your fix of their long list of beers. The summer move is their Gose Gone Wild, the first sour ale brew kit of its kind, that’s stocked at Brooklyn Brew Shop. The kit yields a beer that’s dry hopped using West Coast American hops and uses lactobaccillus, the same stuff that gives your yogurt, kimchi and other fermented favorites their tangy flavor. Despite its funk, the beer is easy to drink, chilled on a hot summer day.
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Good Batch Peanut Butter Pretzel Bar, $5
The Good Batch’s Anna Gordon began selling cookies in Brooklyn off a wagon she parked at the Brooklyn Flea. The cookies eventually became a vehicle for the company’s famed ice cream sandwiches. Now, seven years later, Anna and her head baker Katie Legazpi created a much more portable and easily devoured ice cream bar. On top of a peanut butter pretzel nougat are layers of vanilla ice cream, creamy fudge and ganache, peanut brittle and sea salt. Think of it as a fancy Snickers ice cream bar with the perfect balance of salty and sweet.
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Wine Coolers by Ramona, Prices Vary
Sometimes you need something sweet, refreshing and just a little boozy. At least, that’s how our 16-year-old selves felt when we first dipped our toes into the saccharine, fizzy adult-beverage world. That’s the exact thinking of Momofuku beverage director Jordan Salcito, who created Ramona, a slightly fizzy rosé, made from organic zibibbo grapes, and grapefruit juice combo in sleek can perfect for portable drinking or throwing it back to college by shotgunning one with your friends.
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Destination Dumplings, $6 for a single order
Portable food is key for summers spent running from one event to the next—and experience tells us that navigating Smorgasburg alone is near impossible when our food requires utensils. Enter Destination Dumplings, from Tristan Chin-Fatt and Andrew Steinberg. Natives of Flushing, the city’s “dumpling capital,” and veterans of the city’s restaurant industry, Tristan and Andrew are bringing their pans to Smorgasburg all summer long. But their dumplings are anything but traditional. The guys blend their respective heritages of Chinese-Jamaican and African-American-Jewish to fill their dumplings with ingredients like Peking Duck and Jerk Chicken.
