Escargots with ranch-dusted lettuce wraps.
Photograph: Andrew Bui
“Perhaps we will name this the Tiffany Room, I don’t know. I’ve a factor about naming rooms,” says the chef Jeremy Salamon. He’s standing within the entrance of his restaurant Pitt’s, which can open this Friday in Pink Hook. Employees had not too long ago put in, sure, a pair hanging Tiffany lamps with plans to put in just a few extra, simply to make certain the room lives as much as the title. The area was as soon as the house to Fort Defiance and, in speaking to Salamon concerning the undertaking, it begins to grow to be clear that he needs his new restaurant to really feel immediately acquainted to just about anybody. (Just a few blocks up on Van Brunt, a flyer for the restaurant’s opening was plastered to the entrance window of a café: “Consideration neighbors, you’re cordially invited …”)
Salamon hadn’t been seeking to open one other enterprise in any respect. His fingers have been full with Agi’s Counter, the Hungarian Jewish café that he opened in Crown Heights in 2021. However Agi’s was a much bigger hit than Salamon had anticipated, and demand had led him to begin on the lookout for one other area to bake their cheesecakes, cookies, and babkas. Initially, he was solely on the lookout for a commissary kitchen, however his pal Caroline Schiff informed him that Fort Defiance was closing. He’d heard it had a superb bakery, and he figured he’d look. That’s when he modified his thoughts: “I simply actually fell in love with every thing,” he says.
Whereas Agi’s Counter calls again to Salamon’s grandmothers, Pitt’s will draw extra from his personal life. “When it comes to the menu, its construction is sort of a French bistro, however it has this underlying theme of American southern,” he says. He grew up in Florida and spent summers in North Carolina. One main inspiration for the meals right here, he says, is Invoice Smith’s Criminal’s Nook, a “landmark” Chapel Hill restaurant that closed in the course of the pandemic. “It’s like French and southern meals sort of coming collectively, however in a really diner, enjoyable means,” Salamon says.
He additionally appeared again on New York eating places from the 2000s — locations like Prune (the place he cooked early in his profession) — as he put collectively the menu. One spotlight can be escargot with green-goddess cognac butter, which prospects pour out of the shell into ranch-dusted leaves of lettuce to make cups. There may also be sweetbreads with rosemary, fish sauce, and yellow-eyed beans, a touch on the southern thread that may run by way of extra of the meals: There’s a Nation Captain riff, fried poussin dusted with an “altered” model of the seasoning (together with Sichuan peppercorn) and served with a aspect of carrot-ginger salad. Pimento cheese is made with two kinds of Gouda and fried saltines for dipping. The crackers additionally determine right into a dessert impressed by the Atlantic Seashore Pie (standard at Criminal’s Nook). Salamon is looking his model a Pixie Pie. Different desserts embody a Pleasant’s fashion sundae with drinks, from bartender Ben Hopkins, that purpose to be equally approachable. The Rosie Martini is a Gibson-esque, with onion brine and an onion garnish. Taeko Espresso can be a nod to Fort Defiance’s regionally well-known Irish espresso.
Fried poussin.
Photograph: Andrew Bui
Since taking on the area, Salamon and his inside designer, Sydney Moss, have finished extra than simply set up Tiffany lamps and cubicles. The again room, which was Fort Defiance’s barroom, has been adorned with a carrot wallpaper, which doesn’t fairly veer into grandma territory however is appreciably homey. The pastoral theme retains up by way of the remainder of the area, from a light-up duck to illustrations of cattle (together with a really portly pig) and tiles painted, by Salamon’s cousin, with vegetables and fruit. They’ve reupholstered the outdated chairs from Fort Defiance, added captain’s chairs for the bar, and usually brightened up the area, as properly: “The opposite day, Sydney was like, ‘It’s a restaurant-themed restaurant,’” Salamon says. “I believe it’s nostalgic.” There’s wooden paneling, pink cubicles, and people lamps that at all times remind Salamon of a billiards room, or perhaps TGI Friday’s. “We needed it to be sort of campy and cheesy,” he says.
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