& Sons Ham Bar

The slicer at the center of the bar

The 1910 Berkel slicer sets the pace; André Hueston Mack, sommelier at & Sons Ham Bar in New York City, built the room around that cut. The machine came first, bought for his home and used at parties before it became the working gesture of a Prospect Lefferts Gardens ham bar. Mack opened & Sons Ham Bar in 2020 after years in service, moving from dishwasher and Corporate Service Trainer at Darden Restaurants to sommelier posts at The Palm, Bohanan's, The French Laundry, and Head Sommelier at Per Se. That lineage matters here because the room is not a chef's monument. It is a floor person's room, organized around product, timing, and the conversation between a slice of cured pork and a glass of American wine. Mack founded Maison Noir Wines in 2007, and & Sons extends that same habit of translation: take the cellar vocabulary seriously, then make it usable at the counter. The name carries his four sons, but the method carries the earlier stations, repetition before flourish, service before speech.

Country ham cut thin enough for light

The program starts with American country ham, shaved to order rather than treated as garnish. The bar rotates about a dozen hams, with plates built so the differences in smoke, cure, fat, and age stay legible. A Kentucky Dakota ham aged 42 months sits in the same grammar as Incontro jamón from Nebraska-raised Mangalitsa pigs; both ask for thin cutting, room temperature, and a wine that does not flatten the fat. Mack has said guests should taste at least three hams if they want the range to appear. The plate has its own small architecture: ham, cornbread madeleines, and cornichons or pickles, with the fat left where it belongs. Around it, the kitchen keeps to small plates that answer the cure rather than compete with it, including chicken wings stuffed with house-made chorizo, brushed with fish sauce, and finished over binchotan, and stuffed heirloom eggs with hollandaise and petals of Lady Edison ham. The wine list stays all American, reaching back through vintages from the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. It is a cellar argument made in small pours.

Twenty seats, brick, and the pass close by

The room is narrow, about 20 seats, with brick walls, soft light from 1930s pendants, and enough vintage Americana to make the all-US sourcing feel like a discipline rather than a theme. The counter keeps the bench-side work visible. A ham moves from slicer to plate in a few strokes; a bottle comes off the list with the same lack of ceremony. There is no need to overstate the contrast with Mack's fine-dining years. The room makes it plain. Tables are close, the pass is near, and the pace stays conversational, which gives the service team space to describe cure, age, fat, and producer without turning the meal into a lecture. & Sons Buttery next door carries some of the same larder thinking, including hams from the restaurant, but the bar remains the more immediate station.

A neighborhood format with a cellar mind

Mack has spoken about keeping money in the neighborhood and building local jobs as part of the work around Rogers Avenue. At & Sons Ham Bar, that conviction arrives through concrete objects: American cutting boards, American pottery, domestic cheese, American wine, and country ham sliced on the Berkel. If the menu keeps moving toward his idea of an omakase for ham, the anchor is already in place: one counter, one slicer, and the fat on a slice of Dakota ham.