Defonte's Opens in Gramercy

Defonte’s, the sandwich shop institution of Red Hook (since 1922), just opened a second outpost in Gramercy. If you notice from the photo here, the original Defonte’s is all waterfront industrial charm: bricked over windows, a touch of barbed wire accent; everything painted over a shade of green that otherwise belongs slathered across a municipal bridge railing. Defonte’s Red Hook interior is adorned with autographed 8x10s of actors in wiseguy roles and far flung beauty queens, like Miss Delaware 2008. The corner building is a stone’s throw from the Battery Tunnel, so a lot of Defonte’s customers drive a truck, carry a badge, or do both. They work quickly, open early, and close early—the ten person steam table sandwich brigade is usually all but cleaned up around 3 p.m.

In Gramercy, Defonte’s now has a website and a logo. It’s a workmanlike brown and white thing, no frills. Breakfast sandwiches are served all day, fresh mozzarella is made in house, and the enormous sandwiches are all under $10. No much has changed: the Gramercy Defonte’s makes its own cloved-spoked Virginia ham and actually roasts their roast beef, which is served medium rare. Eggplant is sliced thin on the globe slicer each morning and batter fried, which means sometimes it’s more or less crispy. The store’s sandwich-making lineage—which Dan Defonte will tell you dates back many decades to a man named Brooklyn who dealt cards and hot coffee to men waiting on work—results in a rather straightforward product, a sandwich that would rather feed you than draw attention to itself. They don’t even have to pile on the extra helpings of history and old Brooklyn lore.