About Us

When husband and wife team, Neil Kleinberg and DeDe Lahman, opened Clinton St. Baking Co. in April 2001, their mission was to make the best baked goods in the city, using the freshest ingredients, hand-mixed in small batches. They bought dark French-roast coffee, ground it in house, and hired a college student to serve it with warm muffins, biscuits and scones. Soon the locals stumbled in, and mornings on Clinton Street came alive.

Rumors of Neil’s simple, delicious omelets, sandwiches and soups moved people to cluster, then crowd, and now form lines up the block. We’re an unassuming storefront, with just 32 seats, and yet people travel from Tribeca — and Toronto, and Tokyo — to eat here. New York Magazine voted Neil’s blueberry pancakes best in the city (twice!). Naturally, we agree, but the locals still come in for no-fuss-just-plain good food: a juicy burger and Brooklyn Lager, fried oysters with a spicy bloody Mary, or a decadent hot fudge sundae made with artisanal vanilla ice cream from the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory.

The lore about our brunch lines we cannot deny . . . but try us at dinner, when the lights are dim, the crowds calm, and the food is “anything but ordinary,” says the New York Observer. Okay, and Yes: You can still get a stack of pancakes after dark.

Bios

Neil Kleinberg

Co-owner of Clinton Street and Community Restaurant, Neil Kleinberg raised himself in a crazy kitchen in Flatbush, Brooklyn, among 4 kids, 2 parents, 16 neighborhood cousins, and 6 aunts and uncles. At 10 years old, he became a one-boy culinary wonder who’d do anything to avoid his mother’s “famous” dish: chicken in a pot (the only dish in her repertoire). His lunches, made assembly-line style for his relatives, were simple but classic: Tuna fish sandwiches on rye toast with crisp lettuce and beefsteak tomatoes, fresh corned beef w/mustard and sauerkraut, turkey and Swiss w/ Russian and slaw.

Neil opened his first restaurant, Simon’s, in 1980 at the tender age of 22, and since then has cooked in the kitchens of a celebrated French bistro, a world-famous hotel, and two of Manhattan’s premier private party facilities. After four years catering fabulous affairs at The Water Club with Chef Rick Moonen, he returned to his native Flatbush to reopen the legendary seafood star, Lundy’s, where he and his staff churned out over one thousand seafood dinners a night. It was during that time he developed his love of fish, scouting the Fulton markets at 3am looking for the best catch.

Three years later, Neil helped open Ezekiel’s Café, a take out shop funded by Covenant House, where he taught culinary arts to runaway teens. He has performed his cooking on Martha Stewart Living, The Today Show, Good Day New York, and Food Network’s Throwdown With Bobby Flay to name a few. He is a recurring guest on Martha Stewart Living Radio, and a distinguished member of The James Beard Foundation.

DeDe Lahman

A co-owner of Clinton St. Baking Co. and Community Restaurant, DeDe Lahman began her career at Seventeen magazine, where she was an editor and advice columnist covering fitness, food, and relationships. When she traveled nationwide to produce lifestyle photo shoots, she made sure to hit the best restaurants in every city.  

Later, while working as a freelance writer/researcher, and as a brand consultant to Coca-Cola, Inc., she simultaneously studied culinary arts at The New School. Eventually, she was promoted from prep girl to cook at a yoga ashram where, for two years, she prepared a weekly vegan buffet for 60 yogis and ordained monks. At that time she also worked at the Union Square Greenmarket selling apples from Locust Grove Farm, and delivering hand-picked gourmet grocery bags citywide.

She is certified, from the Integral Yoga Institute, to instruct hatha yoga at the beginner’s and pre-natal levels. Presently, she is at work on the Clinton St. Baking Co.’s cookbook, which will feature Neil’s best (and secret) recipes.

Neil and DeDe first met randomly as patrons at A Salt and Battery -- the takeout fish and chips shop in Greenwich Village. Ten months later they were married. Together, they were featured as NY1’s “New Yorkers of the Week” (March 2004) for the free nutrition and cooking class they offered kids at the neighboring Hamilton-Madison settlement house.