There is a small market at the bottom of Bay Ridge Avenue, right where the neighborhood meets the water. It does not look like the kind of place that sources its meat from the same purveyor that supplies some of the most celebrated restaurants in New York City. There is no velvet rope. No prix fixe menu. No reservations.
But every burger that comes off the griddle at Pier 69 Market is made with beef from Pat LaFrieda Meat Purveyors -- the same fourth-generation, family-owned operation that has been cutting meat for New York's best kitchens for over a century.
That is not a marketing line. It is the supply chain. And it changes everything about what you are eating when you sit down at 10 Bay Ridge Ave.
Who Pat LaFrieda Actually Is
Pat LaFrieda Meat Purveyors is not just another wholesaler. The company has been in continuous operation for over 100 years, currently run by its fourth generation out of a facility in North Bergen, New Jersey. They work with small domestic farms across the country, sourcing beef, pork, poultry, veal, lamb, and wild game in organic, all-natural, pasture-raised, and grass-fed varieties.
What sets LaFrieda apart is precision. Their facility operates around the clock, six days a week, and they chop over 100 different custom burger blends every single night. Not one standard grind fits all. Each restaurant client gets a blend designed specifically for their menu -- a specific ratio of cuts, a specific fat content, a specific texture. Custom patties range from one to ten ounces, ground to order.
Pat LaFrieda chops over 100 different custom burger blends every night. Each restaurant gets a blend designed for its menu. Pier 69 Market is one of them.
They also operate the industry's largest dry-aging facility, holding over 12,000 primals at any given time. Beef is dry-aged anywhere from 21 to 120 days, depending on what the customer needs. This is not the kind of operation that cuts corners. It is the kind that other meat companies measure themselves against.
When restaurants in New York want to put "Pat LaFrieda" on their menu, it means something. It means a commitment to quality that most places cannot or will not make. The name carries weight because the product earns it, every night, one custom blend at a time.
Why a Bay Ridge Market Sources from LaFrieda
Pier 69 Market could source its beef from anywhere. There are cheaper options. There are easier logistics. There are suppliers who would not require the same standards of handling and preparation.
They chose LaFrieda anyway. Not for some of their meat -- for all of it.
That decision tells you something about how Pier 69 operates. This is a neighborhood cafe that serves La Colombe coffee and Rishi tea. The pattern is the same across the entire menu: find the best version of the thing, then serve it at a price the neighborhood can actually afford. Premium sourcing, neighborhood pricing. No pretension in between.
The result is that you can walk into a waterfront market in Bay Ridge, order a burger for about the price of a fast-food combo meal, and eat the same caliber of beef that people pay three or four times as much for in Midtown.
The Burger Itself
The signature Pier 69 Burger is a double smash patty with American cheese, house special sauce, and a toasted brioche bun. It is not complicated. It does not need to be.
When you start with LaFrieda beef, the technique can stay simple because the raw material does the heavy lifting. The smash method -- pressing a ball of ground beef flat on a screaming-hot griddle -- creates a deeply caramelized crust through the Maillard reaction. More surface area touching the heat means more flavor compounds. Two thin patties give you four surfaces of crust instead of two, and the fat content in the LaFrieda blend renders through those patties in a way that keeps everything juicy despite how thin they are.
The American cheese is deliberate. It melts at a lower temperature than aged cheeses, which means it goes completely liquid and coats every crevice of the beef. The brioche bun is toasted on the flat-top until the cut surface develops a golden crust -- structural enough to hold up, soft enough to stay out of the way.
The special sauce bridges everything together. Nobody will tell you what is in it. What matters is that it makes the burger taste more like itself. Good condiments disappear into the experience. This one does exactly that.
What LaFrieda Beef Actually Tastes Like
There is a difference between commodity ground beef and a custom LaFrieda blend, and you do not need a trained palate to notice it. The first thing is texture -- the grind is coarser than what you get from a supermarket tube. You can feel the structure of the meat, even in a thin smash patty. It is not paste. It is beef that was cut, not extruded.
The flavor is cleaner and more concentrated. There is a richness that comes from the fat distribution being intentional rather than random. In a custom blend, the fat-to-lean ratio is calculated for a specific application. For a smash burger, that means enough fat to render and create crust without the patty turning greasy or falling apart.
Most people who eat a LaFrieda burger for the first time just say it tastes "better." They cannot always explain why. The reason is consistency -- every patty is ground to the same specification, from the same sourced beef, with the same fat content. There is no lottery. Tuesday's burger tastes like Saturday's burger.
The Hidden Gem Factor
Bay Ridge has always been a food neighborhood. You can eat your way down Third Avenue and hit Greek diners, Middle Eastern spots, Italian red-sauce joints, Chinese takeout, and Dominican lunch counters. What the neighborhood has lacked, historically, is a place where the sourcing matches what you would find at a high-end Manhattan restaurant.
Pier 69 Market fills that gap without any of the pretension that usually comes with it. The market sits at the base of Bay Ridge Avenue, steps from the waterfront promenade and Owl's Head Park. You can walk in wearing running shoes and a T-shirt, order a Pat LaFrieda burger and a La Colombe cold brew, and sit outside watching the harbor.
That is the hidden gem part. It is not hiding -- it is right there, at 10 Bay Ridge Avenue. But the quality-to-price ratio is so far beyond what you would expect from a neighborhood cafe that people who discover it feel like they found something the rest of the city has not caught up to yet.
More Than Just Burgers
The LaFrieda sourcing extends beyond the signature burger. Every piece of meat that comes through the kitchen at Pier 69 Market is from the same supplier. Breakfast sandwiches, lunch plates, catering trays -- all LaFrieda. The commitment is not selective. It is a standard applied to everything.
Pair the burger with a cold brew or an iced latte. The coffee program runs on La Colombe beans, and the tea menu features Rishi -- the same pattern of premium sourcing at every station. The market operates Monday through Friday from 6 AM to 5 PM and weekends from 7 AM to 5 PM, which means you can hit it for an early morning coffee or a late lunch and still catch the LaFrieda menu.
How to Get Here
Pier 69 Market is located at 10 Bay Ridge Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11220. It is a short walk from the Bay Ridge Avenue R train station, and there is street parking along Bay Ridge Avenue and the surrounding blocks. The NYC Ferry also stops nearby at the Bay Ridge landing.
Call ahead at (718) 777-6969 or order online for pickup. If you are coming specifically for the burger, the lunch window is your best bet -- the griddle is hot and the line moves fast.
Try the Pat LaFrieda Burger at Pier 69
Premium beef, smash technique, neighborhood prices. 10 Bay Ridge Ave, Brooklyn.
