AUGUST 2025 - 🥬

An Ode to R&D Foods.

After 11 years of serving their community in the most delicious and comforting ways, Ilene and Sara of R&D Foods are hanging their aprons up and closing on August 9th, 2025.

My love affair with R&D started many moons before their prepared foods counter with their restaurant, 606 R&D. My old roommate Patrick and I would venture from our apartment in Lefferts Gardens, take a jaunt through Prospect Park, get a light misting from the fountain at Grand Army Plaza and make our way down Vanderbilt avenue where a beacon of deliciousness was our final destination. We did this routine almost every weekend getting a donut once we sat down, for him a powdered sugar for me cinnamon sugar, we would dip them into piping hot cups of black coffee. We would then order whatever else our hearts desired, mine usually something with Benton’s bacon (the best bacon in America, that can only be compared to the bacon from Singleton’s in Vermont IYKYK) which they proudly served.

Besides these brunch jaunts we would make the journey some Sunday evenings for “Family Meal” to eat in or take out. Patrick and I both live far away from our families and this was the closest we were getting to a home cooked meal by someone near and dear. Sunday Dinners at R&D went something like this: Ilene would dream up something delicious, onion bread with salted butter, her famous kale salad, pork chops served with creamy polenta and a garlicky broccoli rabe, all piled high and sauced to perfection into and onto heavy beautiful white ceramics plates and bowls. Everyone in the restaurant would sit and eat the exact same thing at their tables. Each dish passed amongst friends and the light buzz of the Sunday scaries melting away with every spoonful of consumed. The light too has to be noted was always warm and perfect. Warm tones like when you are sitting just close enough to a fire to fall in love with the person you might be sharing the time with.

In 2014, Ilene and Sara decided to close the restaurant for their next venture which would be R&D Foods. On the last day of the restaurant my friends Patrick, Viri and Danielle and I ate all 3 meals there. Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner and then for a night cap where we all regaled on all the wonderful memories we had there. I still have the menus squirrel away in a memory box to frame in my future home. That while sad, I knew wasn’t the true ending. I could still have the kale salad, just in a different form, sold by the pound and in a take out container.

R&D Foods for the past 11 years has fed me so well, its the closest feeling I have to stopping over at a friends house for breakfast, lunch and dinner whenever I want!
The specials and offerings would be written out in Ilene’s signature script letting you know just want to get.

My typical order for breakfast:
Iced red eye, kale salad sandwich with an egg on a Portuguese roll, cinnamon sugar donut or a Bhangra crunch cookie for later.

For lunch:
Mortadella sandwich (the olive parsley salad on it was to die for) or a kale salad sandwich with cheese OR half pound of rice noodles with half pound of kale salad, hibiscus iced tea to drink

To take home:
a whole chicken, a loaf of bread, a pound of kale salad, 1/2 pound of rice noodle salad, 1/2 pound of eggplant and mushroom salad, 1 pint of carrot ginger soup.

There are spaces in the town or city you live in that become your third space. For the majority of my adult life R&D has been just that. Ilene and Sarah are a part of my New York life and family.

Throughout the pandemic I was comforted by my long jaunt to pick up whole roasted chickens (no one does it better than Ilene not even Costco, I SAID IT), pounds of kale salad, rice noodle salad and blistered eggplants all to eat throughout the week. It gave me comfort and consistency when everything in the world seemed so uncertain. It kept me fed. All these recipes of course can be found in Ilene’s James Beard Award winning cookbook Saladish but somehow when I make it, it just doesn’t quite taste the same.

Ilene and Sarah have watched me grow up in the city (I met them when I was 22, i’m 36 now), they have been supportive of me through my many ventures in life and pie and so much more.

Before it’s closure on August 9th, I will be eating and stocking up and freezing all I can. For this girl wants to hold on to the moment for just a little longer. I suggest strongly you do the same.

But for now to kick off the month, I just wanted to say a huge thank you to two women, Ilene and Sarah, who have kept me fed so well during this chapter of my life, I couldn’t have asked for a more delicious memories or be more thankful to have such a place of comfort to turn to in a city that can often be the opposite.

R&D Goods will remain open, so they haven’t gotten rid of me just yet. I’ll be by for my weekly treat and chat.

your friend in kale, mortadella and so much more
xoxo
Stacey