What does a restaurant do when its products are so popular that guests often ask to buy extra to take home? If the restaurant in question is Crabtree’s Kittle House in Chappaqua, the answer is to start its own line of gourmet products. Kittle Kitchens launched roughly four years ago with a jar of bacon jam, a sweet-savory mix of local Mountain Products Smokehouse Bacon and Crown Maple Syrup, perfumed with coffee
and coriander.
Since, the line has expanded to include other popular menu items. You can buy the sharp, whole-grain, apple-cider mustard served alongside charcuterie; the espresso-ancho rub that currently gives seared yellowfin tuna a spicy kick; and bags of granola from the breakfast menu. Based on what the kitchen has in surplus, Chef Jay Lippin may also create other limited-edition items, like rainbow-chard jam or red-pepper jelly. “We’re using everything,” says Lippin. “It’s kind of cliché now, but we’ve been doing the food-waste thing forever.”
A steak sauce is currently in development, and Lippin is experimenting with a trio of hot sauces, naturally fermented in whiskey barrels that were used to brew beer at Broken Bow in Tuckahoe. The yellow sauce — the spiciest of the bunch — is a blend of habañero and lemon-drop peppers from Hudson Valley Seed Library, which Lippin says have “a decent amount of heat and citrusy flavor.”
Kittle Kitchens products are available through Eat Local NY or at the restaurant, which can also ship anywhere.
