“Why do you have a hammer?” These are the first words I hear Allison Robicelli speak to her son as he runs through her dining room and behind the juice counter, the instrument of Thor finding itself hooked on motor skills in the hands of a toddler. He answers the question by gleefully knocking a book to the floor.

Stephanie, morning cashier and motherly eye, leads the boy away, but there’s plenty more to, um, read. The dark, low-slung shelves that line the room house several children’s books, a Star Wars novelization, the Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci and Zingerman’s Guide to Good Eating, among others. This is home, after all – all told, Allison and her husband Matt probably spend more time in this dining room than in the one inside their own house just a few blocks away. The two chefs trade reminders about the orders of the day before Allison commandeers a double stroller for her two sons and rolls out for a doctor’s appointment.

One year after its opening, Robicelli’s Gourmet Market has grown snugly into its mom-and-pop design. The brainchild of two Bay Ridge natives with a gift for pastry and an unyielding commitment to local business, Allison and Matt’s two-room storefront fuses their years of culinary experience with an essential desire to build something that will help carry their personalities into the next generation. As I sip from a cup of deeply roasted fair trade coffee, I’m tempted to fit Robicelli’s into the gourmet oasis of North Berkeley. When Stephanie tells me that she’s stepping out for a smoke, I remember that I’m in Brooklyn.

If you give her the chance, Allison will flood a conversation with the importance of small business, the significance of cooking and just about anything else that can be tied into the subject of Robicelli’s. Far from riding the grooves of a broken record, her words are purpose-filled and goal-oriented. Her husband – at least when talking to this writer – assumes a more relaxed tone, though his words are no less firm.

At 1:30 the store is empty, and he’s on the phone, working out orders and asking the landlord about today’s plumbing futures. From behind the register his posture is deceptively diminutive; it’s not until he gets up that you realize that Matt Robicelli is a behemoth of cooking with one of the world’s most highly ranked bacon tattoos.

“I just like good food,” he explains casually as he heads behind the counter to make sandwiches. Matt points out that before Robicelli’s became one of New York’s premier cupcake sources, its first item to sell out was butternut squash soup, so loved by his customers that some of them came in for a bowl every day until it had gone out of season. He may be a pastry chef by trade, but he stresses that “cupcakes are what saved the business, not what make the business.”

Robicelli’s savory options are indeed delicious, though you wouldn’t know it from the cupcake-and-tattoo coverage Robicelli’s receives on the internet. Mastered by Executive Chef Jon Greenberg and personalized by Matt and Allison, the market’s lunch fare features perfectly toasted artisan bread, fresh ingredients, house made condiments and a sense of balance and creativity that does more than a good turn for the term “gourmet sandwich.”

Just before 2:00 a family friend wearing a Ghostbusters t-shirt and a bit of a smirk walks into the dining room and declares: “I’ll eat… me.” Reaching for the deli meats, Matt explains that the Dugan, a sandwich consisting almost entirely of pork products, takes its name from this man, a cop with no perceived need to finesse the awkwardness of his order. I wonder if he realizes how deftly his words invert the adage – probably not, but lack of intent rarely robs a joke of double meaning. I am what I eat. I’ll eat me. It’s a good fit.

At 4:00 Allison returns and begins tending to the afternoon crowd, mostly moms and kids stopping in to snack and chat. She holds court in the dining room, trading anecdotes about cake, discussing neighborhood news and analyzing the lunch menus of local schools. Matt punctuates the conversation with quick checks on business, taking cupcake orders from regulars while telling the story of the worst wedding cake customer he’s ever had to suffer.

When the mothers have gone home, Allison’s work is just getting started. At 5:16 she goes over the tasks of tonight’s baking session with Dean, a Fort Hamilton High student who plans on starting his own culinary career here, working as an intern of sorts under the wing of the Robicellis. Their working space is a basement kitchen of modest means: five energy star refrigerators, two energy star freezers, two weathered Kitchen-Aid stand mixers, an induction range and a multi-rack pastry oven. Everything here is done in small batches, and every component is made from scratch. Telemetering plans from her Blackberry to a sheet of printer paper in red Sharpie, Allison outlines a plan of attack.

“I have to do these boobs by midnight. I haven’t figured out the nipple situation yet,” she thinks aloud while mapping out the components of a special order for a friend’s party. Dean precociously suggests using strawberry tips; Allison banks the idea as she turns on the oven and gathers the ingredients for her first batch of cupcakes.

Working with the certainty of a robot and spouting insight into the whys and hows of baking with equal efficiency, she moves quickly through two batches of cake batter. Chemistry points on milk solids, sifting, moisture and mixing anchor yarns about previous jobs, learning to cook and even her honeymoon to Grenada, which was strongly influenced by the fact that the spice isle is home to the world’s finest supply of nutmeg.

Allison delves into the story of Hurricane Ivan and the carnage it inflicted on Grenada’s nutmeg industry, which takes roughly seven years to grow a new crop to harvest. Intertwining the farmers’ pride in their own crop (apparently, many of them are still waiting for their first chance to harvest since 2004, stubbornly refusing to import trees from Southeast Asia) with her pride in her own baking, she presents a single nutmeg seed from her honeymoon stash and offers it to me as a shared quality.

“Cupcakes were not part of the plan,” Allison admits in agreement with her husband. Yet, as a baking muse, they have become undeniably central to the working week at Robicelli’s. As product, they outshine almost every other cupcake in the city. Never too sweet, always moist and spongy, and crowned with labor intensive, heat-averse, gloriously silky French buttercream, they are a testament to Matt and Allison’s love for their craft.

Shunning the very notion of red velvet and trying out new recipes every week, Allison sees the cupcake as “a vessel, a way to put flavors together.” Every component of every cupcake is planned meticulously under the assumption that each creation should play by its own rules. She and Matt typically need one attempt to perfect a new recipe – the only glaring exception to this is the Iona, one of a series of cupcakes themed after characters from John Hughes’ Pretty in Pink. Iona’s balance of pear olive oil cake, blue cheese buttercream, port wine and candied walnuts was ultimately reached, sold and devoured, but only after a few practice runs in the kitchen.

As the fourteenth song on Dean’s Cake playlist comes to a close, Allison shifts her attention to sticky buns. Matt stops by to check in and crack jokes about his childhood summers on the family farm before he heads home to be with the kids. Upstairs, Jon is closing up the storefront. Dean packs his things and leaves for the night; he’s due back in twelve hours to help deal with the Saturday rush.

Allison is the last one standing. With a few hours left in the workday, she waits for dough to rise and recalls the chowhound behavior of her mother.

“Get in the car and go,” she repeats. Trips to Avenue U, Astoria, Columbia Street and countless other dining destinations surface as the memories that compel her to stand in front of an oven on a Friday night while her sons inch closer to bedtime. The broad swath of devotion applied to all things Robicelli is suspended by pot holders.

-Two cupcakes and several cupcakes in progress were given to The Eaten Path for free during the research of this story.

Robicelli’s Gourmet Market
8511 Third Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11209
718.748.6804

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 at 9:22 pm and is filed under New York.