Brooklyn Fare, a new non-chain Downtown Brooklyn grocery store, will open tomorrow. The man behind the refrigerated counter is Cesar Ramirez, a Bouley/Bar Blanc vet who’ll create and maintain Brooklyn Fare’s line of hot and cold prepared foods. Next month, Brooklyn Fare will also introduce a small restaurant inside the store’s standalone commissary kitchen, located a few doors down on Schermerhorn Street. Its single dining table is actually one seamless, stainless steel table in the center of the kitchen. Here, Ramirez says, he will serve five-course meals for a “super reasonable price.”
If the small preview held last night was any indication, Ramirez is working hard to tear down the fourth wall of your typical grocery store: Brooklyn Fare is selling Smuckers and Reese’s mocha-chocalata cereal, for sure, but also provisions like fresh breads and cheese. Other offerings include sushi beyond California rolls, braised short ribs, meatloaf, and mac and cheese. Brooklyn Fare seems to be intent on selling real food made with care, not a lifestyle. Buy what you need.
A fava bean and artichoke salad contained fresh, tiny artichokes peeled by hand and was dotted with herbs. Roasted peppers did not come from a can and were marinated in a vinaigrette made from even more roasted peppers. And so it goes that your roasted pepper experience at Brooklyn Fare might as well be excellent: roasted peppers squared, not some wan vegetable served straight from a #10 can that arrived stateside with more frequent flyer miles than you’ve managed to rack together in the last few years.
Brooklyn Fare, 200 Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn; (718) 243-0050
