New Haven-Style ​‘Cue Comes To State

Blend Foxon Park White Birch soda and maple syrup together with smoked shallots, smoked jalapeños, and tart cherry juice. Add a little brown sugar and some salt and pepper. Simmer it down and you have the makings of the house, signature New Haven-style barbecue sauce at Bull & Swine.

The restaurant opened two and a half months ago at 969 State St. and Chef Paul Cordero has no qualms about publicly sharing his recipes, whether for his sauce or for his brining liquid.

You can likely find some variation of his brine, a liquid used for flavoring and tenderizing meat, on the Internet. (Hit play on the video below to see the brine in action and to get a look at Cordero’s brisket.)

As for his sauce, he hopes you think his barbecue is so good that you won’t even reach for it. Though it will be there on your table with a plethora of other barbecue sauces and condiments.

“It’s like choose your own adventure for your barbecue,” Cordero said. ​“People creating that type of experience for themselves. I want people to come here and be super comfortable. Yeah, we’ve got a couple of tricks up our sleeves, but we understand that there is a lot of deep emotional attachment to barbecue. I respect that. It’s why I’m doing this. But we just felt like we could do something new without really reinventing the wheel.”

He said the ingredients in the sauce pay homage to flavors that make him think of New Haven specifically, like Foxon soda, and New England in general, with the addition of maple syrup.

At Bull & Swine, the meat right now consists of the beef and pork implied by the name, but also chicken. It comes unadorned aside from the dry rub and other ingredients painstakingly worked into most of the meat at the restaurant before it’s cooked low and slow in the restaurant’s smoker. A caddy that includes Carolina, Kansas City-style and the New Haven sauces comes to the table with every meal.

“Nothing comes slathered in a sauce that is either too spicy for some and not spicy enough for others,” said Craig Hotchkiss, a co-owner of Bull & Swine with Albert Greenwood. ​“That’s the number one thing.”

“America’s love for condiments, I don’t deny them that,” Cordero added with a chuckle. ​“But I put it on the table so that I don’t have to ruin your food.”

Hotchkiss and Cordero might be familiar if you’ve ever eaten at Oak Haven Table & Bar, a tapas-style, farm-to-table restaurant in the same block. Cordero served as the head chef at Oak Haven for about a year before Bull & Swine opened. He has since turned most of the day-to-day operation of that kitchen over to Chef de Cuisine James Bizak, though the men still work together to forge the menus of both restaurants.

Taken With State Street

The idea to not only open a barbecue restaurant, but to do it in the same neighborhood, on the same street where they’ve already had three years of success, came rather organically, Hotchkiss said.

Mexican restaurant and tequila bar C.O. Jones had recently closed. The space was available. Cordero said when everyone took a tour and saw the dark wood paneled interior and the brand new Southern Pride smoker in the kitchen, the idea to do barbecue was a no brainer.

“We were looking to start a second restaurant, and this one happened to be right down the street, and we love the area,” Hotchkiss said. ​“Upper State Street is where we want to kind of invest our resources. This place basically came up for sale .… and then we were like, ​‘You know what? There’s no barbecue here in New Haven. And if there is, its either a corner store that has barbecue, or the little guy who’s got his little hole in the wall thing.’”

“Most barbecue restaurants are counter service,” Cordero added. ​“We kind of felt like we keep it homey with the lines of tables and the whole communal thing. We knew that we wanted to expand but we also didn’t want to cannibalize ourselves with something that we’ve had some steady success with.”

Hotchkiss said that meant taking a bit of the best of what they were doing at Oak Haven — using fresh local ingredients and creating a well thought out beverage program — and marrying it with what they saw as the best elements of barbecue such as St. Louis-style ribs and Texas style brisket. For good measure, Cordero threw in a chicken recipe that marries two styles of chicken, jerk and fried.

But unlike at Oak Haven, which is steeped in artisanal spirits, eclectic wines and a whiskey-based mixology ethos, at Bull & Swine you’ll find a Corona or a Miller High Life. You’ll also find draft lines for beer, wine and cocktails. That means instead cocktails mixed by a bartender, the drinks get poured up in a similar fashion as you would a beer, with finishing touches added on the end.

“It’s not any less delicious or crafty. It doesn’t affect the drink,” Hotchkiss said. ​“It’s just a different concept, and helps bring more of that casual feeling that you want in a barbecue place, but just a little bit more upscale.”

And Hotchkiss is careful with the word ​“upscale.” The food is the same kind of finger-licking ​‘cue and sides that you might find at a more traditional barbecue restaurant.

“It’s barbecue with the added touch,” he said. ​“Our whole concept with all of the restaurants that we do and will do is casual, fine dining. We want you to be really comfortable in here with the idea that you’re getting something a little extra.”

Game On

Hotchkiss said with the interior of the restaurant, the available seating outside, in front of the restaurant and in the alley next door, there is a lot more space for events than at their sister restaurant. Chef Cordero said he’s looking forward to barbecuing other types of meat.

“I wouldn’t be opposed to barbecuing anything,” he said. ​“I really wouldn’t. As long as it’s OK with the state that I make it, I’m OK with that. Goat, lamb, veal are all things I’d like to do.”

“We have some catering gigs coming up, and we’re toying with the idea of doing obscure meat,” Hotchkiss added. ​“The thing with gamey meats is that they are usually lean, and lean meats in long smoke lend themselves to being really delicious.”

He said he could envision the restaurant having access to venison now that deer hunting season has started. Cordero said he’d also like to do seasonally available meat such as wild turkey in the fall and lamb in the spring.

“At Oak Haven, the core menu changes seasonally,” Hotchkiss said. ​“The actual ingredients and some items may change weekly. We print the menu weekly over there. We have the same concept here that we print our menus in house — not that we change our menu frequently. But we have the option to change our menu whenever we want. It’s not like this is set in for a year.”

“We wanted to forge our own path and kind establish a new region of barbecue which hasn’t happened in I can’t tell you how long,” he said. ​“When we decided that we were going to do New Haven barbecue it was more for the fact that we wanted to do something new, and we wanted to do something unique to New England, which I don’t think anyone has really done.”