Traif is located right at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge, so it's a bit away from all the craziness. The backyard has a super cute garden that seats about 5 tables. It was a perfect day to sit outside and enjoy our meal. We started with 1 hot coffee, 1 Vietnamese iced coffee, and a whiskey cocktail ($10). Dan's hot coffee came out first and as coffee goes, it was pretty damn good. Then my iced coffee came out and I thought it was going to be with the whole set-up that you usually get with Vietnamese iced coffee, but it came pre-made already, which was a bit disappointing. But after I tried it, I was in heaven. I'm not sure if it had as much condensed milk as it should, but there was a hint of hazelnut that made it even sweeter. The whiskey cocktail had green ice, mint and whiskey in it...it tasted pretty much like an iced tea with a shot of whiskey.
For food, we were really torn on what to order. I was pleased that the most expensive thing on the menu was only $14, with everything generally falling into the $8-10 mark. I had read that their dinner portions are tapas-esque, so I wasn't sure if brunch was also, but it's usually a bit hard to do bite size brunch dishes. I was torn between the egg-in-a-nest or the chicken and biscuits. In the end I chose the egg-in-a-nest ($9) because it sounded different and a side of bacon donuts ($6). Dan got the Costanza which was a lobster scramble with marscapone cheese ($14). The food was amazeballs!!! Seriously the food is about a 5 forks level, it was simply amazing. Dan's dish was especially yummy with actual good size chunks of lobster meat in it, although honestly the eggs were so good, I would have even loved it without it. My dish was a brie-roast portabella mushroom grilled cheese with truffle cream. Dear god, it was so delicious. The cheese was not gooey but had the right about of melt to it and the truffle flavoring was just right, because it's super easy to go overboard with truffle and ruin a dish. The egg was poached perfectly so that the yolk ran down the sandwich just so. Both of our meals came with a really simple but great tasting salad. If it wasn't incredibly rude and gross, Dan and I both agreed that we would have taken the plates to our faces and licked them clean.
When I ordered the bacon donuts, I had told the waitress if she could bring them out last since it came with ice cream and I didn't want it to melt. I had thought that she would monitor our meal and then put the order in when we were almost done eating. Instead, she waited for us to completely finish and then she put the order in. This was a bad move because then we ended up waiting a really long time between dishes and we were actually pretty full that we could have done without the dish. When it finally did come out, it was a bit of a disappointment. Maybe it's because our main dishes were so good, but neither of us were blown away by this dish. It just tasted like fried dough with bit of bacon on top of it. The coffee ice cream it came with was pretty good and when you mixed the ice cream and donut together it was a pretty good sweet/salty combo.
By the time we were done, the place was pretty crowded so I understand that the waitress was probably super busy but it took at least 15 minutes to hail the waitress and get our check. I think if I had ended the meal at our main dishes, I would have given this place 5 forks, but the dessert and the long wait for our check knocked off 1 star. Despite that, I would definitely come here anytime and would love to try out the dinner menu. Total bill with tax: $46
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