If Korean tacos and bacon jam aren’t enough proof that some of the best ideas are born in food trucks, we submit East Ender as further evidence. This two-story exposed-brick-and-mortar gastropub from the chefs behind Portland, Maine’s SmallAxe Food Truck gives Karl Deuben and Bill Leavy more room to play, and, oh, do they like to have a good time. Fried sweetbreads are like grown-up chicken nuggets, pimento-cheese spaetzle seismically improves on mac-and-cheese, and the duo have found what beef tartare has been missing all this time: a side of hash-brown cakes.
What to order: local beef tartare with hash browns, chicken-fried sweetbreads with General Tso’s sauce, local pork schnitzel with pimento-cheese spaetzle, burger with Stilton and onion rings
We love: that one thing hasn’t changed since the duo’s food truck days: the burger, made with cold-smoked beef
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