There's a saying in Yiddish my Great-Aunt Sadie used to tell me when we'd visit her in Ft. Lauderdale: "If you're going to eat pork, get it all over your beard." As an 8-year-old to whom puberty and halakha were both just three-syllable words, I was confused. Now I realize it's the Yiddish version of "Go Big or Go Home." At any rate, Traif, a new restaurant at the Brooklyn base of the Williamsburg Bridge, is full of happy eaters, beards glossy with bacon grease. Apparently they each have a Great-Aunt Sadie of their own.

It takes chutzpah to open a restaurant specializing in pig parts just a stone’s throw from Hasidic-heavy South Williamsburg and its scary forelocked squads of Shomrim. It’s like if someone opened a gay bar called Infidel right outside Mecca. “Two for one Heinekens for hajjis.” But two things save Traif: Its chef/owner, Jason Marcus, is a Jew. And also, he’s pretty good at his job. Marcus’ menu is exhaustive, ever-changing and printed daily in a font called Bradley Hand. Given the general unsavviness of Traif’s design, I doubt whether Marcus was aware the font was designed by Briton Richard Bradley, a Bible lecturer and typographer whose oeuvre consists mostly of creating fonts for Christian literature. Type nerds, though, can’t miss the irony.

When I went a few days before Rosh Hashanah, there were 22 savory options, plus a cheese plate and four desserts, all made by Marcus and two helpers in a space tucked behind the bar. The majority of the plates are meant to be shared, which means there’s no danger in breaking the often overlooked but never broken 11th Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Order Identically. Most of the dishes at Traif are under $10; all are under $20. A better value in Williamsburg can’t be had. And Marcus doesn’t stint on the flavors. Despite a tiny kitchen, Marcus is a maximalist when it comes to ingredients. Often his expansiveness works, especially when he nails the balance between spicy and sweet. An ingenious avocado and corn salad ($8) supported, not just physically but flavorfully too, the sweetness of the few tiles of braised pork belly atop it. A spicy big-eye tuna tartare ($9) was likewise accompanied underneath by delicate tempura eggplant and on top by kecap manis, a sweet Indonesian soy sauce. It looked like bruschetta but packed a whorl of complex flavor. A sautéed broccoli rabe ($8) appeared with an unlikely supporting cast of a fried egg, truffle toast and silky slices of roasted Portobello mushroom. (If you’re ever craving inoteca’s truffle egg toast but are too lazy to cross the bridge, this is the next best thing.)

But Marcus’ ambitious menu is not without its perils. There are bizarre oversights on the simplest dishes. Fried squash blossoms stuffed with mozzarella ($9) were overly breaded, sloppy and soggy, and with Eat Pray Love’s squash blossom bukkake so fresh in my mind, this was a bitter disappointment. And often Marcus’ sweet-tooth throws otherwise well-calibrated dishes into wacky morning cartoon land sweetness: Short rib sliders ($18) might as well be meaty Mars Bars and a slab of sautéed foie gras ($15) would have made IHOP proud: smothered by a late-breaking sunny-side-up egg and a cloying maple hot sauce, it was as overbearing as a Jewish mother. But not mine. Mine is great.

After such a sweet assault you might be tempted to skip dessert. Don’t. A bacon donut with dulce de leche sauce ($6) is like a sweet porky bomboloni. Thankfully, the bacon crumbled atop exists more for aroma than flavor. Another offering, Mom’s Key Lime Pie ($6), is coddled in a graham cracker crust and topped with Grand Marnier-soaked blueberries. It’s a light and tender reminder of visits to Florida and to call one’s mother. That is to say, it is a mitzvah.

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Traif
229 S. 4th St. (betw. Roebling & Havemeyer Sts.)
Brooklyn, 347- 844-9578