This Might Be the Best Latke in Town

The celery-root latke from Sungold Photo: Hugo Yu

Any restaurant can make an order of $12 fries, but the move from “good” fried potato to “excellent” requires intention, and, sometimes, days of prep work. I’m thinking, in part, of Golden Diner’s home fries, where the potatoes are shredded, rinsed, brined, steamed, pressed, chilled, fried, and chopped before being served next to an egg sandwich stuffed with a hash-brown patty inside as well. You can see why people wait hours for its brunch.

The twice-fried Belgian batons at Pommes Frites are among the oldest entries in the NYC Potato Hall of Fame, while the “proper English chips” at Lord’s get a nod thanks to their irregular, craggy chunks that beg to be eaten alongside a bloody steak. (And if you wanted American “chips,” you can find those at Ernesto’s, piled with Spanish ham.) Even frozen fries can be recognized, as we all learned during the 2020 disappearance of the crinkle coins known as cottage fries from JG Melon and Roll-N-Roaster.

Gertie’s latkes are more spuds of valor, sized like hockey pucks and fried until nearly as dark, a contrasting surface for the cool sour cream. And then there is the celery-root latke at Sungold, which is a different spin on the genre entirely:  thick triangular slices of crisp potato cake that look next to nothing like the prototypical potato pancake, which is exactly what earns them their spot within the crunchy-potato pantheon.

This all-day restaurant, which opened last month inside Williamsburg’s Arlo Hotel, leans into its heirloom namesake, with a focus on seasonal produce: smoked sunchokes with citrus; charred cabbage with Caesar dressing; rigatoni with cauliflower and mint. Chef Michael King — who previously cooked at As You Are in the Brooklyn Ace Hotel — wanted something more than plain potatoes. He mixes shredded Idaho russets and shaved celery root before squeezing the excess liquid and packing into a pan with clarified butter to slowly cook in a 300-degree oven until tender. The resulting cake is weighted and cooled until cooks are able cut generous slices that are then fried to order. The entire process, from that first shredding to the final plating, requires two days.

Each $16 order is a couple of thick wedges, fried to a hard crusty shell surrounding a softer gratin-textured middle, drizzled with pear butter that serves as an effective analogue for apple sauce, which was inspired by “a really sticky, dark apple butter” from a restaurant in King’s college town. The latke gets its kick from a generous snow of finely grated horseradish and a copious scattering of minced chives. This is a fried potato to eat with a fork and knife: simultaneously sweet, greasy, salty, crunchy, and fresh.

The celery-root latke is available at dinner, alongside the restaurant’s pastas and wood-fired pizzas, which encourage group dining. But an order of latkes plus a martini would also be a fine, and Greenmarket-y, take on the New York Happy Meal.