If at first you don’t succeed, location, location, location.” Isn’t that how it goes? Confidant, a gamely ambitious restaurant, opened last spring in Industry City trumpeting its firstness: Never before had the artificially turfed home of the Design Within Reach outlet contained a fine-dining establishment. That could have been a clue something was off.
Sunset Park is a vibrant neighborhood, but Industry City, the developer-led behemoth that grew like a Goliath in David’s front yard, is something different. It’s a nice spot for visiting the Li-Lac Chocolates factory or helping yourself to a discounted couch, but after dark, the place can feel deserted and eerie. Can’t fault Confidant’s founders for trying. Brendan Kelley and Daniel Grossman met at Roberta’s, which put Bushwick on the dining map, so they had experience cooking in (once) far-flung corners of Brooklyn. Roberta’s became a destination; Confidant, despite its best efforts, never did. Its sophisticated take on comfort cuisine (potpies, steaks, home-baked bread) couldn’t exert the same pull as pizza.
Kelley and Grossman closed the doors and relocated to Brooklyn Heights, taking over the Atlantic Avenue space vacated by Colonie, a local brunch favorite that — along with similarly departed spots like Buttermilk Channel — was part of the wave of 2010s “New Brooklyn” locavorism. Brooklyn Heights holds the distinction of being an extremely residential neighborhood with a surprising paucity of great neighborhood restaurants. (Take it from me: I live there.) Though the tide is starting to turn, the perennially packed status of a few recent arrivals (Ingas Bar on Hicks, Café Brume on Montague) suggests there’s still a hungry local crowd ready to descend. So while Confidant could yet become destination dining, it’s already filling up regularly. It’s always been a neighborhood restaurant. Now it has some neighbors.
“Neighborhood restaurant” may seem like a ding: It isn’t. A great neighborhood restaurant is a Swiss Army knife, adaptable to various purposes and overlapping constituencies. Confidant can confidently be a date spot (the light is seductively dim, and the soundtrack, one recent night, leaned heavy on Sade), but not just. I’ve done weeknight drop-ins with my husband and reservations with family members visiting from out of town (the Upper West Side). I’ve watched couples canoodle at the back counter, a low-key chef’s table where Kelley and Grossman station themselves. I’ve also seen locals belly up to the longer, largely unreservable front bar.
The exterior, trout mousse, the kitchen counter, and prawn pot pie. Hugo Yu.
The exterior, trout mousse, the kitchen counter, and prawn pot pie. Hugo Yu.
The menu, likewise, accommodates without condescending. If Kelley and Grossman occasionally overcomplicate, they have still ensured that there’s enough for the picky of any age. Dry-aged duck breast in a sticky, date-infused sauce is adult contemporary, while the red-sauce rigatoni is weeknight pasta done right, a kids’-menu classic reimagined for grown-ups. It’s pricked with Calabrian chiles and given a smoky bass note of disappearing ’nduja. The hero dish remakes a cafeteria staple, potpie, for the gifted-and-talented set: self-possessed neighborhood tweens who might discourse on the superiority of prawns to chicken, the richness lent by fish bones to the parsnip-studded broth, the soft heat of Espelette warming the filling and gilding the pastry an elegant marigold.
A few dishes lacked the cohesion of their compatriots — rabbit ragù a little dry, cod a little lost in its bowl of Sorana beans — but I found myself unable to summon any great upset on that score. Some of the cheffier extravagances from Industry City have not yet made the trip north (no more of a tuna prosciutto I found unpalatably leathery), but if the simpler preparations worked better for me, something else may work better for you. I’ll have the near-perfect biscuit tortoni, almond semifreddo on amaretti, maraschino and all; you can have the wedding-cake-like strawberry sponge with its layers of cream. At a neighborhood spot, you go until you know what works for you and for the kitchen. You overlook the creaks and cracks, the piebald décor. Is that a framed print of dancing bears right above the painted portrait of melting butter? That it is. It all goes in the mix.
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