Salty Lunch Lady

Eater

"It is limitless what you can do with a sandwich." Dria Atencio, chef-owner of Salty Lunch Lady's Little Luncheonette in Queens, New York, opened up the sandwich shop in 2023. The counter specializes in crafting American classics, such as the Dill Party, made with house-roasted turkey; the Chicky, featuring smashed chicken meatballs; and specials like Buffalo chicken dip served in pizza bianca. For those wanting a sweet treat, the shop offers a rotating dessert menu with cakes, cookies, and pies that often sell out by early afternoon.

Transcript

00:00I think sandwiches are kind of like the perfect food. You can play with texture,

00:06you can play with the bread, you can do dips in sandwiches, you can have a

00:11straightforward sandwich with just like meat and cheese. It is limitless what you

00:15can do with a sandwich.

00:17So we opened in June of 2023 and I was really unsure about like where it would go. I had no idea it was going to be so busy.

00:39So it's 8am, we just got in and we are going to make the brine for our turkeys.

00:43This is our dill party. It's our most popular sandwich.

00:46It's the most annoying sandwich to make, but like it's the best sandwich. I love it.

00:50So we just have this pile of brine. It's sugar, salt, peppercorns, bay leaves, thyme and coriander and garlic.

01:01For this particular brine, we're going to use it for two turkeys.

01:04So we're just going to dissolve the sugar and salt and then we'll like put it over ice.

01:08I love turkey sandwiches, but I really did not want to have a turkey sandwich on the menu.

01:12I also find that brining and roasting turkeys is like a pain in the ass.

01:16But my friend Sarah was like, you have to put a turkey sandwich on the menu.

01:20So I just did it kind of as an opening sandwich and I really didn't expect it to like take off.

01:24But I think that maybe other people were thinking what she did, which is like,

01:28we just want really good turkey sandwiches. And I think it's hard to find places that

01:33do that whole process. It's a lot of work, but we take pride in that.

01:36So now these are going to be put in the fridge and we're going to let them brine for 24 hours

01:40and then we will roast them tomorrow. This is Nick. He is a line cook here.

01:46So he's going to slice a turkey today. These are turkeys that we roasted yesterday.

01:49I am not a huge fan of thick cut turkey in sandwiches. I prefer my sandwiches to have

01:56like really, really thinly sliced meat, particularly with turkey. I think it's great,

02:01like almost like shredded. And if it's not shredded, I will shred it. And we really,

02:05really blow through this. You just kind of feel it out because sometimes it's a little stiffer,

02:09sometimes it's not. So you have to like adjust your pressure on the slicer to make sure it's

02:12staying consistent essentially. When we put it in the pan, we like to pre-fluff it a little bit.

02:16Because on the sandwich, you want a really nice bite. You don't want like a super dense bite of

02:19turkey. And we can get nice sandwiches out faster and everyone gets to eat real quick.

02:23Okay, so we just got our bread delivery. We get bread deliveries every day. This pile is for the dill party.

02:30We go through a lot of it. Like this from Sullivan Street. This is so delicious. It's stretchy

02:36dopio. It's kind of just like soft, pliable bread. It's a little salty. So I think there's no like

02:41perfect mathematical equation to like make a good sandwich. I think it's all just really important.

02:47But I definitely think that if you have really, really bad bread, you cannot make a good sandwich,

02:51no matter how delicious the interior is. We don't make it in-house for like so many reasons.

02:55I'd rather just pay someone who does it really well to help me out make good sandwiches.

02:59And this is the dill mayo. It has so much dill inside. Dill Havarti. I just do it to cover the

03:05bottom. It's more like a textural thing for me. It has this like creaminess that like only comes from

03:10this kind of cheese. And then this is the turkey. I think with meat in general, when we're stacking

03:15meat, like I think Italian is the best example of this. And you have the prosciutto and the salami

03:19and all the things and they're flat and you bite into it. It becomes this like homogenized singular piece

03:24of meat. I think about that a lot. And that's our dill party sandwich.

03:30I've always wanted to run a sandwich shop. The first restaurant that I worked at was called Sorella

03:34and it was all women working there. And we were all in our early 20s and it was chaos. And we're

03:40like, let's make a sandwich shop. It was like a sandwich shop slash vintage clothing store like

03:45half and half. Everyone went on to like do really great things and like be really high up in like the

03:50industry. And I'm just like, let's still do sandwiches. Now we're gonna make the base for

03:56our chickie, which is our smashed chicken meatball sandwich. One of our other popular sandwiches is

04:01the chickie. It's my personal favorite. And it's just a giant smashed chicken meatball. It's ground

04:08chicken, sauteed onions and garlic, chopped thyme and parsley, breadcrumbs, egg, ton of salt. And then we

04:16mix that in a big batch and then we portion them out and then cook them to order. So we make a batch

04:21like this pretty much every day. I think that this is one of our more popular sandwiches, this and the

04:27dill party. These are the two sandwiches that I haven't changed on the menu. I think people would

04:32like genuinely be mad at me if I like stopped making it. So now that we're done balling these chickens,

04:38Chai's gonna wrap them and we're putting the reach in and use them for service. Yeah, it's served on like a

04:43really chewy like seeded bun with Bulgarian feta and arugula, grilled onions, some paprika aioli.

04:50We do sell out of them occasionally. We've gotten like better with just trying to be on top of that

04:54because for a while we were just selling out all the time. We want people to be able to come in like

04:58close to the end of service and get what they want.

05:03So now we're gonna move on to start making our desserts. We're starting off with the strawberry

05:09lemonade cake. It's an olive oil based cake and then it'll have strawberry frosting and jam and

05:16lemon curd. So first we're gonna measure out all of our wet ingredients, dry ingredients.

05:22There's like nothing wrong with a slice of cake and like a cup of coffee for lunch. And sometimes

05:27people eat their dessert before their sandwich as a little appetizer because we're adults and we can

05:32do whatever we want. I'm a little embarrassed about this but like it's fine. I use these grandma egg

05:38beers and I have a bunch of them. I don't measure. I just know. My grandma never measured and that's

05:44who I idolize. I do kind of like grandma style cooking here and I mean that with the most respect

05:50to grandmas around the world. And so I felt really cared for when my grandma like made me something

05:56and I hope that people feel that like when I make them food. I'm putting these cakes in around 360

06:02degrees. And they'll go for 30-ish minutes. We're gonna make some jam, put some citric acid in there.

06:09That's it. It's very easy. Every day I come in, I make desserts, I make the cookies, I make the cakes,

06:16I make the fillings. I make most of it in the mornings. I definitely feel like it's a push to do

06:21three different desserts in the morning. I don't know. I just feel like I've been cooking for so long.

06:25It doesn't matter what you're doing in the kitchen. That's just like what we do in this industry, I think.

06:30In addition to our sandwiches, we have rotating desserts every week. I make an icebox cake or

06:36cream pie and then like a cookie. And I change them every week. Total different menu. And I just

06:41try to keep it moving. So the desserts are really popular. Way more popular than I had intended them

06:48being. I normally sell to them like pretty quickly. So I tell people that if they want to come, you

06:52should come like before 2. It's 11. We open in 30 minutes. Everybody's here and prepping for a few

06:58hours and we're just like ready to go. Or for Guy or for Hunter. So service starts from 1130 and goes

07:08until 4pm every day. But I would say mostly we're very, very busy, which is honestly so fun. Sometimes

07:15it's a little bit slower in the morning and we get hit in a normal lunch rush. But sometimes we just have

07:20like a line of people waiting outside and we're just like, let's go.

07:23How about this guy for you too? Yeah.

07:25Okay. All right. Next is a regular ship to go.

07:30I come to Salty Lunch Lady probably once a week. At least. Yeah. Sometimes I come too. Yeah.

07:37I usually fall back on their classic sandwich, which is the dill party. Oh, I've been really

07:42addicted to the tuna melt lately. And I feel like I was getting that like once a week for a while. And

07:48then they started like remembering me by my order. And I was like,

07:50I feel like that's embarrassing that I'm like known as the tuna milk girl. But it's so good.

07:56I hope that what we're like cultivating here is a space where people just like have a neighborhood

08:01spot. I mean, the Ridgewood's really small. So people can come and like see their friends,

08:05be alone, but have like a little like chunk that is theirs that they can enjoy.

08:11We're going to start working on our chickens for our buffalo chicken dip sandwich.

08:16We're going to cook it slowly in some water, herbs, a little bit of spice. And we'll like

08:21let it go for like an hour and a half, maybe two hours, depending on what they're doing. And we just

08:26cook them whole and then cool them and then pick them and then mix them with all the good stuff.

08:31And then like literally make a dip, like how you would have on like Super Bowl.

08:36So in addition to all our regular sandwiches that we have, we also have weekly specials that we rotate

08:42at least one a week. And this week we have the buffalo chicken dip sandwich on Pizza Bianca.

08:47We literally just make buffalo chicken dip. We're poaching chickens, cooling them,

08:52pulling them and then making kind of like a buffalo sauce, cooking like sweating onions with a lot of

08:58butter, cooking that with tomato paste, caramelizing that and then mixing that with like hot sauce and

09:04cream cheese and mozzarella and cheddar cheese and a little bit of blue cheese and some scallions.

09:09And then we cook it off. This amount will probably sell out like 45 minutes. And that just took me

09:16like, I don't know, like half a day to make. Also came today. This is so delicious. If you're unfamiliar,

09:24Pizza Bianca. I want to say it looks almost like shallow, thin focaccia and it's so beautiful.

09:32It's super, super hard to cut. She's done. We scoop that onto Pizza Bianca. I just like the idea of

09:43buffalo chicken dip. I like dips in general. Who doesn't love buffalo chicken? After I finish this,

09:49this is going to go in the oven for maybe like 20 minutes and then it'll cool and then we'll like

09:55cut it out and make sandwiches with it. So it's 3 30. We just are finishing up with service. We have

10:0330 more minutes. It's been a really busy day. We still out of our turkey sandwich, the dill party

10:08and the chickie. We're just winding down. We'll prep a little bit for tomorrow so we like can start to

10:13get ahead for the next day and I'll do a lot of dessert prep tonight. My greatest joy in life make

10:19things for people that come in here that like make them happy. People will be like, I had such a really

10:24awful day and you can like come in and like for one split second you can have like a half smile on

10:30someone's face. I think that I've done something and I think that food is really special in that way.

10:34I don't take that for granted.

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