When Eater Young Guns Josh Ku and Trigg Brown opened Taiwanese restaurant Win Son in Williamsburg in 2016, they were “begging” for people to take notice, Brown says. But three years later, it’s mobbed — and the duo’s newest venture Win Son Bakery across the street is a far more casual endeavor in hopes of complementing their city-wide destination.
The bakery and counter-service restaurant, which opened this morning at 164 Graham Ave. at Montrose Avenue after weeks of pop-ups and limited menus, is intended to be a neighborhood sandwich shop, a project between Ku, Brown, front-of-house partner Jesse Shapell, and pastry chef Danielle Spencer,
Though its soul is Taiwanese, influences from Taiwan, France, and the United States have made their way into pastries, fried chicken, sandwiches, and drinks that reflect their collective experiences — a style that plays into the fusiony nature of Taiwanese cuisine itself.
Pineapple buns get laminated bottoms a la croissants, red sauce for the eggplant parm sandwich has fermented chile paste on a Taiwanese milk bun, and a chopped chicken cheesesteak of sorts has a three-cup chicken marinade and gets a scallion pancake wrapping.
“What’s fun about Win Son Bakery is it’s us trying to study Taiwanese cuisine and respectfully interpret our version of it and our experiences,” Brown says.
That experience comes from fine-dining kitchens like Craft and Upland, as well as his love for and deep knowledge of Taiwanese flavors and dishes. Anything savory is his domain, and his training shows in dishes like the “James Tracey” sandwich, which features the Taiwanese dish pork knuckle but made with the French technique used on pork trotter torchon, a nod to his chef at Craft. Brown serves it on breakfast sandwiches and at night with pickled jalapeños, onions, and a fried egg. “It’s a sandwich that really straddles high-falutin French food and a Taiwanese soulful, classic dish. It’s a special dish to me,” Brown says.
As for the rest of the savory fare, during breakfast, there are egg and raclette sandwiches with bacon or those braised and fried pork trotters, served on either milk bread or scallion pancakes. Other than sandwiches, there’s turnip cake with country ham and shrimp and fan tuan, sticky rice rolls filled with pork floss, salted radish, egg, and a fried cruller. A vegetarian version comes with smoked tofu.
Dinner turns to fried chicken with a sweet glaze, a burger with fermented bean curd special sauce, duck over rice, and other sandwiches again on that milk bread, served with fried potato wedges or vegetables like white sesame Caesar salad or snow pea leaf salad with black pepper dressing. It’s all paired with natural wine and cocktails like a baijiu slushie, selected by Shapell.
Spencer, meanwhile, is culling from her experience in Tom Colicchio’s kitchens and combining that with Taiwanese flavors and baked goods. She makes the milk bread for the sandwiches, and she’s putting her spin on pineapple buns, mochi millet doughnuts, and black sugar egg custard tarts.
Ku’s the operations guy, and he had a heavy hand in designing the sleek and simple counter-service space alongside Souda’s Luft Tanaka. It’s filled with bright whites, plants, and an orderly constellation of lights on the ceiling.
What’s most important to the team, they say, is that the neighbors feel welcome and that this is their space. Diners can stop in for Variety coffee with housemade soy milk, a full meal, or just some seasonally rotating soft serve in flavors like corn and sweet potato — something that’s become difficult to do for early regulars to the once-calm Win Son.
“It kind of bums us out sometimes when people in the neighborhood are like, ‘I don’t even come to Win Son anymore because there’s a three-hour wait.’ In theory it’s a great problem to have, but those are really important people to us,” Brown says. “We hope that we can do some good stuff for the neighborhood and be this sandwich shop that’s a little more than a sandwich shop. If you don’t want to wait an hour you can have a drink here and get some food. That’s the goal.”
Win Son Bakery is open for breakfast daily from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. and dinner Tuesday through Sunday from 5:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. Lunch will follow.