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I once overheard that the food at Lori Jayne was best described as “bar food as big as your definition of it.” While I can’t recall where I heard it, the sentiment is certainly fitting as Sam Braverman’s version of the genre has so far included Korean-fried chicken glazed with soy-garlic and beef tallow to minced Gulf shrimp spread over hunks of milk bread. And those viral steak frites? Don’t even get us started. But you see, this is just how Braverman cooks, regardless of whether he’s hawking food in his driveway or in the back of a Bushwick-esque dive. Because the simple fact is Braverman cooks how he likes to eat, an ethos he’s carried since his first pop-up named SITLE, which simply stood for Shit I Like To Eat.
“If it doesn’t excite us, regardless of the background or techniques involved, we’re not going to serve it to our customers,” said Braverman of Lori Jayne.
Yet if you ask Braverman how he would describe his cooking, he would say it's simply an amalgamation of himself, his time working in New York kitchens, and his travels across the world and the country at large. Yet, the one who started it all was his mother, as his restaurant bears her name.
Like mother like son, Braverman’s mother isn’t a classically trained chef. But just like him, she is “exceptionally passionate about food.” Growing up, Braverman’s table was full of foods “you wouldn’t think you’d find on the Upper West Side’s Jewish family's dinner table” as his mother cooked blue crabs plucked from markets in Chinatown and fried chicken nuggets, cooked Milanese-style. This early exposure caused an itch for the kitchen, which he explored while working at BaoHaus, the ambitious Taiwanese eatery run by Eddie Huang. Yet, ever the creative, Braverman juggled another passion: music. Proficient in the guitar, keyboards, drums and bass, Braverman spent time performing around the world, subsequently exposing himself to niche cuisines found around the States and abroad, with most of his time spent in Spain.
Soon, his two worlds collided as Braverman began selling food at the same venues where he played shows. So it seemed like a natural fit when he took over a kitchen inside a bar and venue at 140 Wilson Ave. He landed the job with one stipulation: to continue to cook their best seller, chicken nuggets. The rest of the menu? All fair game.
And so he opened Lori Jayne May of 2023. First, he focused on making a better nugget by using high-quality chicken, hand-breading, and serving it with a sauce that was made in-house. Yet it wasn't before long that Braverman upped the ante, churning out weekly specials of ribs coated in a pomegranate plum sauce with crispy rice cakes, fried lobster wontons with black garlic sauce for dipping and smoked goose rubbed with a mixture of lapsong suchong and red yeast rice.
“When we opened the restaurant, the menu was four items long—it was chicken nuggets, chicken tenders, Sichuan mushrooms and fries. And since then, it's expanded greatly,” said Braverman. “In just under two and a half years, we've made over 220 distinct specials."
Yet, it was the steak frites that excited the New York crowd the most. While Braverman and team previously played with a few steaks on the menu, coating cuts in mornay cheese sauce one day and ramp pistou on another, it was an ask from a friend and content creator, Rob Martinez, that rocketed Lori Jayne into notoriety. With a request of steak frites au poivre, Braverman and team made them on a whim, and by whim we mean personally grinding peppercorns to order, basting chuck flap in cultured butter that was cooked down with beef trim and placing it on top of crispy, vinegar-brined fries, always made fresh. One video later, and crowds quickly packed the red-lit dive bar in search of the $20 steak frites deal. Yet, Braverman is more than just a one-dish pony.
“As proud as we are of that dish, it really has kind of overtaken a lot of the other work we do at the restaurant,” he said of the viral dish.
After two and a half years in the dive setting and Braverman was ready to spread his wings. Facing limitations of the small back kitchen with a growing team paired with a budding family on the way, Braverman was ready to find a gig where he’d be in bed by two instead of in the kitchen. Lucky for us, he found it at Time Out Market Union Square.
This fall, Lori Jayne will be making its debut inside the new market hall. Soon, Braverman will introduce one of his other cult classics: the LJ Burger. Made his way, Braverman’s burger includes patties seared in beef tallow, served with a thickle (a.k.a., a thick pickle) and swirl of his signature Lori Jayne sauce made with a secret blend of garlic, capers and 14 herbs and spices. Modifications come in the form of thick-cut bacon and his “almost” award-winning chili (you’ll have to ask him for the story behind it). Soon to debut items will include his Sichuan spiced mushrooms, frozen custards that rotate and a Buffalo chicken sandwich, another favorite from his days in Bushwick.
But this is all just part of a larger plan for Braverman and the brand as a whole. In addition to his outpost at the Market, Braverman is set to open a full-service version of Lori Jayne in Williamsburg, as reported by Eater. With these steps, Braverman hopes to continue to tell the story of his past and his present through his food.
"We just want to create an unpretentious but high-quality, cravable, fairly priced thing that can, from my perspective, exist in multiple concepts," said Braverman. "We want to give you our version of a full, comprehensive Lori Jayne, a new American experience."