THE GURGLING COD: Sifton Soundtracks: Fatty 'Que b/w Sleigh Bells, "Crown on the Ground"

Building on the return below 14th, Sifton hops on the L train and lands in Williamsburg, winding up at a place that:

"looks like a biker bar for the kind of bikers who don’t ride Harleys in leathers and boots, but stripped-down Schwinns in boat shoes and skinny jeans."

In a perfect world, Carles would have ghosted this review,* but no such luck. We are at The Fatty 'Que, the Brooklyn outpost of Zakary Pelaccio’s Fatty Crab empire. The 'Que has a distinctly less Kissingery vibe than many of Sifton's recent stops:

The entrance sits low and dingy below the sidewalk, next to some stained traffic cones. It’s dark and shouty inside, with spartan dining rooms spread out over three small floors. These are all faintly scented with oak smoke, and packed with people in beards or vintage dresses, everyone talking loudly over tiny tables that are not quite sticky, peering at menus in the low light, ripping into their meals.

Luckily, the food is pretty good if pricey, or "incredibly good," according to Sifton:

The food is incredibly good. Fatty ’Cue is a restaurant worth traveling to visit. To expand on the playbook of awesome, Malaysian-ish cooking on display at the Fatty Crab restaurants in Manhattan, Mr. Pelaccio’s Fatty Crew — with Corwin Kave as executive chef and Andrew Pressler as chef de cuisine — has added to their roster Robbie Richter, the Queens-born pitmaster who helped start Hill Country in 2007. Fatty ’Cue offers smoked crabs and smoked lamb ribs, coriander-dusted bacon and pieces of pig. You can eat smoky noodle soups and pickled chilies. There is brisket and bao.

I have not been to the Fatty 'Cue, but based on my limited experience w/ ZP's Fatty Crab, I'd be more interested to see him move in a less sticky, rather than more sticky direction. My meal there was like the first Go! Team record -- fun for a little while, but wearying over time. Sifton seems to enjoy the food a good bit, but this kind of food in this kind of atmosphere seems like it might get to be too much of a good thing quickly.

It will be interesting to see what the 718 cheer squads have to say about this review, in that it seems slightly patronizing towards both ZP and the borough -- the last sentence before he drops the uno is "It is difficult not to sound like Mrs. Cleaver saying so, but can you imagine what this young man could do if he straightened up his room." Hard not to feel like Sifton is suggesting that Brooklyn is Manhattan's playroom.

The question of the soundtrack is tricky. In making it easier, than, say, The Mark, Sifton makes it harder. Items like "Chinatown white-bread toast slathered in fat rendered from every animal in the kitchen: pork mixed with beef mixed with duck mixed with lamb. Master fat: schmaltz for the deeply Reform," tempt one towards the obvious toast w/ an Animal Collective of fat, but resist. Something kinda sticky, catchy, but ultimately grating? Heroes du jour Sleigh Bells fit the bill, as Maura explains over to the Awl: