Don't Fear Warm Weather Pot Pie

My night at Confidant in Industry City

It’s become almost impossible to spend a day or two in New York City and avoid all the food courts, behemoth mixed-use buildings, and whatever you want to label a part of town like Hudson Yards. You know what I’m talking about: places that feel so sterile and dystopian that it’s like you’ve walked inside the algorithm and it already knows everything about you. Spotless and half-empty, expensive, anti-community with corporate logos everywhere, usually designed to look like a perfect place to park a Cybertruck, and the last places you can usually find a Blue Bottle Coffee these days. Make of that last part what you will. I feel like it speaks volumes in contemporary New York City.

When Industry City—the waterfront area in Brooklyn that was once bustled with shipping in manufacturing when America used to actually make stuff—started the redevelopment process in the aughts, with the goal of attracting both artists and the tech world, I thought nothing sounded less inspiring to me than sitting in the shadow of the Metropolitan Detention Center. When they started repurposing the old warehouses and factories over the next decade, I started to sense it was about to become another of those plays where an area starts off trying to seem a little gritty and artsy, then it’s suddenly overrun with European tourists buying luxury goods from companies that have no ties to the neighborhood, city, or state. Industry City could very well become the next Soho or Dumbo in the next few decades, but over the pandemic, Emily and I started checking it out since we figured anywhere Sahadi's would agree to open up another location at couldn’t be that bad. And you know what—it wasn’t. In fact, whenever we’d take the short trip to Industry City, we’d always end up staying longer than we’d intended. It has retained some of its old industrial feel, but it doesn’t feel like it’s a relic of the 2000s reclaimed wood and taxidermy boom. And the food is great. A little pricey? Sure. But I go there and have a nice time, I eat well, and it feels like I’m somewhere other than New York City. Then you start to walk home underneath the Gowanus, you marvel at the fact that there are a few porn stores with jack shacks still in operation just a few feet away, and you think that maybe we can have some nice things.

While Industry City had pizza, burgers, and some of the best inexpensive Japanese food you can find in the area, it had lacked a place to sit down and have a meal. We’re calling everything with cloth napkins fine dining now, but I’m old enough to recall that term meaning fancy, so seeing Confidant labeled that way made me think the area was getting some Thomas Keller joint for millennials. I was excited to try it out since I tend to appreciate anywhere featuring Roberta’s alumni, but yeah, I was apprehensive.

This isn’t exactly a review, but I since I mentioned my concern with Confidant feeling a little out of place in its humble-yet-chic setting, I should say that it absolutely fits in with the rest of Industry City. The place is spacious, the menu is interesting without being cloying or pretentious, and Cody Pruitt of Libertine helped with the cocktail program. We went with the bread and butter with a side of boquerones, tuna prosciutto, and a little gem salad. That was easy; the small plates all look like they’d hit. It was the mains that gave me a little trouble, especially since Emily laid claim to the monkfish before I could. That’s the perils of asking your spouse what they want to order first, I guess.

It wasn’t a steak night, and ordering chicken the first time you go to a restaurant feels like giving up, that both you and the menu aren’t willing to take risks. The duck pasta special sounded lovely, but I wasn’t in the mood. The only thing left was what I’d been told was the star of the show: the prawn pot pie. Two prawns in broth, pearl onions, parsnips, and some shrimp tossed in for good measure, it sounded delicious, but it was also (a very nice) 69 degrees outside when we walked in. I love pot pie, but I’m trying to forget about winter and not eat things that help sustain me through it. Alas, I decided I needed it. If my entire dinner at Confidant was to be a 10/10, I had to try to thing that’s been their most popular menu item since opening last month.

“I’ll be honest,” the sever said without a hint of overselling. “It just keeps getting bigger.”

Bigger? It’s a big pot pie? I’ve had big pot pies, my man. You can literally swim in those things, but it would be like swimming through much since most pot pies are filled with a thick soup of peas, mushrooms, and whatever other veggies are available. It’s a sustenance meal, and I rarely walk into a restaurant—especially one I’ve never gone to before—thinking I need something that will help me survive the awful weather outside.

When the pot pie arrived, I quickly understood that what the server meant about it growing in size was like how Andy Warhol once described Tama Janowitz’s hairdo whenever he saw her—it just kept getting bigger and bigger. I think the chefs at Confidant are attempting to see how far they can push things before their pot pie explodes, but the thing is that I’m fine with that since it didn’t come baked into a pie crust like so many of its contemporaries do. The vessel the pot pie was to be served in was messing with me as much as the fact I was getting something hot and soupy in the springtime. I’m no longer in soup mode, and I’m certainly out of hearty soup pie mode, but then I saw something leave the kitchen and I thought…wait. Is that the pot pie?

The picture above is, in fact, the dish in question. Do you see a pie crust? I don’t. What I see is a dome of filo atop a bowl with the prawn and veggies soup, and the stock is light and watery, not thick and gravy-like. It’s flavorful, a little weird (in the good way), and the baked dough sopping up the soup as you eat it is an added bonus, but it got me thinking that I might not want it during a heatwave, but I could absolutely see myself ordering this on a warm July night and enjoying it with a few glasses of white. I think I had an experience last night, like when I finally realized, yes, you can have a big savory meal for breakfast instead of just oatmeal or a muffin or whatever. Who told me I couldn’t have something like pot pie as a summer dish? I want to have a word with them, and also I’d like to humbly ask the chefs at Confidant (since I was told there was some debate about this) that you should absolutely keep your exquisite version on the menu year-round. I think you could start a trend.