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Brooklyn Brackets: Vote For The Borough's Best Artisanal Spot

By DNAinfo Staff | March 3, 2015 7:45am 

 Vote for your favorite artisanal business or seller in Brooklyn. 
Brooklyn Brackets: Showdown of Best Artisanal Fare
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BROOKLYN — From beard oil to bacon bread, if it’s handmade, you’ll find it in Brooklyn.

The borough has become a maker’s paradise as endless shops pop up to offer their own unique spin on everyday goods.

As part of DNAinfo New York’s version of March Madness, we’ve chosen some of the borough’s best to battle one another. We started with your favorite neighborhood institution. Next up: artisanal products.

Each day this week, we are introducing a new Sweet 16 match-up for you to vote on, based on selections from the Brooklyn neighborhoods we cover.

Next week, the contestants will be cut down to eight, then four the following week, and so on until there's a winner in each category at the end of the month.

These artisanal spots and sellers represent the borough’s quirky diversity and are the businesses that offer small batches of specialized products. They show there really is a demand for every unconventional concoction you can dream of, including $10 jars of mayonnaise parodied in a "Saturday Night Live" skit.

Vote for your choice of the borough’s best and check back next Tuesday to vote for the Elite Eight.

Brooklyn Brackets Artisanal Round 1

VOTE IN THE POLL NOW

THE CONTENDERS

EMPIRE MAYONNAISE — 564 Vanderbilt Ave. The sriracha-, white truffle- and bacon-flavored mayonnaise at Empire Mayonnaise in Prospect Heights is so famous that "Saturday Night Live" included the store in a sketch poking fun at Brooklyn. The shop sells more than a dozen mayo flavors for between $5 and $10 a jar.

DOUGH — 448 Lafayette Ave. With flavors like Magenta Hibiscus, Tropical Chili, Chocolate Salted Caramel, you can’t have just one of Dough's treats. We can thank this bakery for helping spread the doughnut craze, as the Bed-Stuy business keeps people wanting more at Smorgasburg and recently opened a location in the Flatiron District. The confections are also sold in cafes throughout Brooklyn and Manhattan.

AMPLE HILLS CREAMERY — 623 Vanderbilt Ave. Salted Crack Caramel, Ooey Gooey Butter Cake and Mexican Hot Chocolate are just some of the ice cream flavors churned out from scratch here. A Prospect Heights favorite for years, the ice cream makers now have locations in Gowanus and Manhattan, an ice cream cookbook and nationwide delivery.

TWIG TERRANIUMS — 287 3rd Ave. Gowanus-based Twig crafts tiny botanical worlds encased in glass jars. A popular terrarium at Twig is called "Piss Off" and has a tiny figure of a punk rocker flipping the bird.

BROOKLYN FLAVORS — 820 Washington Ave. Owner Sophia Sylvester researched the history of each Brooklyn neighborhood to create body care products that smell like more than a dozen locales. Each product is made with all-natural ingredients.

MAST BROTHERS CHOCOLATE — 111 N. Third St. Chocolate from the Mast brothers — who are, in fact, two bearded brothers — has taken off since they started making it in Williamsburg in 2006. Foodie spots across the city, from Shake Shack to Per Se, have even offered some of Mast's single origin, artisanal bars.

KINGS COUNTY DISTILLERY  63 Flushing Ave. This distillery in the Brooklyn Navy Yard pumps out gin, moonshine and whiskey. The booze — created in traditional copper whiskey stills, fermented in locally built wooden barrels and made with corn and barley grown on an small farm onsite — doesn't get more artisanal than this.

BROOKLYN GROOMING — 36 Waverly Ave. Brooklyn Grooming is on a mission to make the beards of Brooklyn smell good. The borough's first male grooming line carries scented facial-hair-taming products like beard balm, mustache wax and shaving oil made from natural ingredients. Founder Mckenzie Santiago is a former bartender who uses his mixology skills to form sweet-smelling concoctions. Each scent represents a Brooklyn neighborhood: Fort Greene is made with lavender and bergamot and Williamsburg smells of cedar wood with hints of anise and vanilla. Products are made out of the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

RAAKA CHOCOLATE — 64 Seabring St. Less than six months have passed since Raaka Chocolate moved its artisanal bean-to-bar factory to Red Hook, but the chocolatiers have already made an impression on the neighborhood with classes, tours and tastings. Raaka's "virgin" chocolate bars are made with unroasted beans and organic ingredients that are soy-free, gluten-free, nut-free and vegan. Its signature bars include Dark with Himalayan Pink Sea Salt, Vanilla Roobois and Coconut Milk.

THE JAM STAND — Brooklyn-based Jam Stand's funky flavors like "Drunken Monkey" and "Razzy Gabby & a Side of Jalapeno" are more than just artisanal jams, according to the two women who run it — they're "an experiment in positive engineering."

SUNNY BANG PROBIOTIC HOT SAUCE — It's spicy and it's chock-full of health-boosting live cultures. This hot sauce was created in a Fort Greene kitchen and became an immediate hit amongst creator Sunny Bang's friends. Bang, sensing he had a winner on his hands, bottled the sauce and it is now available at Greene Grape Provisions, the Brooklyn Flea and other shops in New York City.

BROOKLYN BRINE PICKLES — 574A President St. Pickling has become so ubiquitous that it was running joke on "Portlandia," but for Brooklyn Brine, pickling is a thriving business. The Gowanus business makes traditional cucumber pickles as well as herbed cauliflower, fennel beets and chipotle carrots.

CACAO PRIETO — 218 Conover St. Cacao Prieto's red brick warehouse doubles as a chocolate factory and a distillery with its signature "urban bourbon," Widow Jane. Its single-origin organic chocolate — a treat for dark chocolate lovers — can come with pecan and sour cherries, almond sea salt and hazelnut raisin, among others.

CUT BROOKLYN — Gowanus is home to dozens of businesses that pump out metal products, but craftsman Joel Bukiewicz offers a smaller scale version of the neighborhood's traditional industry. He makes knives by hand in his Third Avenue workshop "from the finest materials available and with the care and attention to detail that precision cutting tools deserve," according to his website. 

SCRATCHBREAD — 1069 Bedford Ave. The smell of fresh-baked goods in the morning draws locals and tourists alike to SCRATCHbread’s brightly painted storefront. This Bed-Stuy spot offers syrupy pecan sticky buns, chocolate orange currant scones, cookies, and more. Customers can also build their own sandwiches, salads, and grits, with toppings ranging from baba ghanoush and kale to queso fondu and smoked chili sauce.

DR. COW VEGAN NUT CHEESE — 93 S. 6th St. If there's a will, there's a way, and if a vegan wants to eat cheese, Dr. Cow Vegan Nut Cheese is here, with cheese made from organic nuts. Meat and dairy eaters may not be familiar with the spot, but vegans are fans. Vegan news site VegNews declared it "product of the year" in 2008.

— Reporting by Serena Dai, Janet Upadhye, Camille Bautista, Nikhita Venugopal, Rachel Holliday Smith, Leslie Albrecht. Graphic by Nigel Chiwaya.

VOTE FOR THE BEST ARTISANAL SPOT BELOW:

Voting in this poll is now closed. Please check back on March 10 for the next round.