Industry City Adds Dinner Restaurant Confidant | Eater NY
"Opening March 19 in Industry City, this ambitious new full-service restaurant from two Roberta’s alums—co-owners and co-chefs Brendan Kelley and Daniel Grossman—aims to be the property’s first standalone dinner destination and a more considered dining option amid a sea of fast-casual outposts. Grossman acknowledges the personal scale of the project: "Working together on a place that’s ours is a different beast," he says. The cuisine is described in simple terms as "New American," with seasonality and local sourcing ("some as local as Industry City itself") at the center; the team plans to launch a dinner program first and then add a robust lunch service for Industry City’s many workers seeking a sit-down option. Kelley emphasizes accessibility for the daytime crowd: "We’re trying to accommodate the actual industry and be something the workers can use," says Kelley, noting that includes diners who want somewhere they can reserve in advance. Despite both chefs' pizza backgrounds, Grossman is done "looking at dough for a while," and instead the dinner menu features precise, ingredient-forward dishes: tuna prosciutto (like cured meat) with mushroom garum and Meyer lemon; trout mousse with dill and roe on sourdough; vegetable-forward plates such as a chicory salad with roasted allium and wild rice and grilled sunchoke with sabayon, tarragon, and miso; larger-format offerings including dry-aged steak with compound butter and a crown of duck with brown rice vinegar agrodolce; whole fish with celery root slaw; and a prawn pot pie with parsnip, pearl onion, espelette, and herbs. The pastry program, led by acclaimed chef Mariah Neston, will include a more casual dessert menu she’s excited about—"I was excited to work on a project in Brooklyn for once," she said—and desserts like a biscuit tortoni with almond praline semifreddo and sour cherry liqueur, malted mille-feuille, rhubarb upside-down cake, and a citrus Eton Mess with bergamot granita and white sesame; by day she plans to introduce a "pie carousel," the kind you’d see in a diner. Housed in a large 65-seat dining room with a lounge area and leather couch to warm the brewery-reminiscent warehouse, the space was previously a pickling facility and required a full kitchen build-out; an initial plan to cook with live fire was abandoned as too costly. The team looked to converted industrial neighbors like Nura (and elements of Foul Witch) as references, and intends to collaborate with the local Industry City community—meat will eventually come from neighbors such as End’s Meat, and Gun Hill Publick House helped make a signature beer for the restaurant. The owners hope it becomes the de facto after-work spot and a weekend destination for Sunset Park; Kelley notes, "This is one of the only places to get wine in this area as well." Grossman situates the project within the neighborhood: "It’s avery diverse areathat has a lot of interesting things going on, between the big Chinatown and this incubator of makers over here," and summarizes their ambition and tone: "We’re not going for stars, but we’re trying to be at a certain [technique] level, but also still keep in mind that we’re in Sunset Park." - Emma Orlow
