Winner Is on a Major Expansion Tear, First Up With a Crown Heights Bar and Butcher

Daniel Eddy of Winner bakery is set to open a new butcher shop and bar in Crown Heights, at 747 Franklin Avenue, at Sterling Place next month. And the project is one part of a dizzying array of expansion plans the former Rebelle chef-turned-prolific restaurateur has in the works over the coming months, including an even more expansive butchery operation.

Winner bakery opened in Park Slope in spring 2020, and quickly drew lines for its stellar baked goods, loaves of bread, and rotisserie chicken. Here, Eddy helped cement a new, more exciting culinary era for the somewhat sleepy restaurant scene in Park Slope, later expanding with a next-door wine bar called Runner Up in October of last year, and an outpost at the Prospect Park Picnic House that opened in spring 2022, serving burritos in addition to the baked goods and coffee.

When Crown Heights restaurant Hunky Dory closed in October 2021, fans wondered what would replace the community hub. Eddy, now at the helm, says he’s not quite trying to replicate what he has going on in Park Slope with his forthcoming Crown Heights venture. The new Winner will function as a butcher shop of sorts, with sandwiches. There will be sausages, rotisserie chicken, and other meat products for sale, some from Marcelo Argueta of the small-batch charcuterie company Cochonneries, which currently supplies spots like Ostudio at Night. But don’t expect to see full animals hanging in the window, says Eddy.

He’s thinking of the space as more of a “satellite” for the full-blown butcher shop he’s already signed on to open in January 2023, in the former home of Fleishers Craft Butchery, at 192 Fifth Avenue, at Berkeley Place. Fleishers shuttered this summer, a year after an employee walk-out that drew headlines, in response to the owners allegedly taking down Black Lives Matter signs from the shop. Argueta of Cochonneries will be involved in both the Crown Heights and Park Slope butcher shops.

In addition to the butcher shop in Crown Heights, Winner on Franklin Avenue will operate as a casual neighborhood bar called What’s In a Name (they’ll abbreviate it to WIN bar).

At night, What’s In a Name will have a bunch of handheld items, which might include burgers, fried chicken sandwiches, and chopped cheeses (an ode to East Harlem, the neighborhood where the chef grew up). Some vegetables will also make an appearance: “Between the bakery and a butcher shop, I need all the vegetables I can get...but to balance the salads, we’ll also have fries,” he said via text message.

Winner in Crown Heights will open in early November. At the start, it will be mostly for internal production use and focus on Thanksgiving offerings like turkeys for pick-up. Come December, they’ll open daily for sandwiches and provisions, and the What’s in a Name bar will debut at night.