James
605 Carlton Ave., at St. Marks Ave., Brooklyn (718-942-4255)
by Mike Peed October 13, 2008

 Deep in the brownstones of Prospect Heights, away from the cafés of Flatbush and Vanderbilt Avenues, with their homelier crowds and everyday fare, James glows like a well-kept campfire, luring diners to an otherwise quiet residential block. For several years, this historic Brooklyn neighborhood has been enduring a growth spurt, and the locals’ eager acceptance of James, coupled with what is essentially a no-reservation policy, has led to hour-long waits. Since James has little room to spare, would-be diners are sometimes forced curbside, left to watch the action within. Once you’re seated, the place is dreamlike: amber beams from an outré Lucite chandelier are reflected in opposite mirrors, and James’s affectations—the grand palms at the end of the bar; the deliberately distressed wall; the copious votive candles—evoke Rick’s Café Américain, via Klimt’s “The Kiss.”

 
Too many servers conflate good with frequently ordered, but at James recently a diner’s request for guidance induced a waitress to recite nearly the whole menu—“seasonal-American . . . with ‘old-world European influences,’ ” as the Web site has it. She was right, beginning with a crab-cake starter that’s capped, in her words, with “super-fresh and really yummy micro-greens.” (The co-owners, Bryan Calvert, who cooks, and his wife, Deborah Williamson, who mingles, live above the restaurant, where they tend a six-hundred-square-foot herb garden.) Seared scallops float in a watercress purée studded with sweet roasted corn, while flaxen prawns are served with a sunchoke purée and garlic confit. An excellent fillet of brook trout is first sautéed, then covered with hazelnuts and chives, folded in half, tied with a string of budding chive, and balanced with a side of fennel and oranges—evidence of James’s vast but not vulgar aspirations. A tender loin of lamb, encrusted with pine nuts and rosemary, and served with a buttery three-bean stew, struck just the right notes of heavy and light. The desserts, though, especially the warm ricotta beignets, win out. On a recent evening, the finest compliment, aside from the empty plates and the vows to return, came from a couple who live just down the block. Thinking of their postprandial chores, one of the two leaned in to say, “We’ll never let our dog go pee on their planters.” (Open Tuesdays through Sundays for dinner. Entrées $14-$29.)

By FRANK BRUNI
Published: September 17, 2008

* Star  (Good)

Gabriele Stabile

MANY people have had an indirect hand in the small, sweet new restaurant James, starting with James Calvert, for whom it’s named. A great-grandfather of the restaurant’s chef, Bryan Calvert, he too made his living as a cook in New York, setting an example, showing the way.

The list goes on to include the writer Susan Sontag, who died in 2004, and the photographer Annie Leibovitz. Bryan Calvert worked as their personal chef at their country house upstate, where he tried to satisfy both Ms. Leibovitz’s desire for farm-fresh, unembellished fare and Ms. Sontag’s affinity for French flair. The menu at James balances the two.

But I like to think that we owe James to Britney Spears above all others. Through his affiliation with Ms. Leibovitz, Mr. Calvert occasionally catered celebrity photo shoots, and he still vividly recalls a session involving the onetime priestess of teen pop.

He said he unveiled the usual bountiful spread, only to be informed that Ms. Spears ate nothing but BLT sandwiches for lunch. So he hustled back into the kitchen and re-emerged with a stack of these, only to be told that he’d erred anew. He’d used mayonnaise. That wasn’t how she liked her BLTs, and that wasn’t how she was going to eat them.

Is it any wonder that he retreated to the everyday agita of the restaurant business, where the customer is perhaps always right but the customer seldom has an eccentric nutrition regimen and an entourage on guard against rogue condiments?

James, tucked among residential buildings in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, is the kind of modest, warm refuge produced by a chef who wants to simplify things, to personalize things, to work on a scale that doesn’t require or invite the meddling of too many outsiders.

Mr. Calvert owns and manages it with his wife, Deborah Williamson. They live in the apartment smack above the space it inhabits, which used to belong to Restaurant Sorrel. When Sorrel went out of business they pounced, recognizing an easy commute when they saw one.

For the renovations they didn’t hire decorators. They themselves decided to reclaim the pressed tin ceiling that had been obscured. They chose the chocolate color of the banquette against the white brick wall opposite the long bar. They picked out the 16-armed translucent lighting fixture in the center of the room.

And they didn’t reach to consultants for help with writing the succinct, appealing menu, which takes advantage of herbs they grow themselves in an outdoor garden adjacent to their apartment, on the roof of a garage next door. James is a Mom-and-Pop operation for the Alice Waters era, giving locavores sage, basil, oregano and rosemary they can feel especially virtuous about.

It’s also an example of how quietly sophisticated the food at restaurants fashioned as affordable neighborhood bistros has become. No bigger, brasher restaurant around town served me an heirloom tomato salad this summer that I enjoyed any more than one at James.

The tomatoes were bright and juicy and didn’t taste of the refrigerator, and the warm goat cheese fondue with them was a perfect tangy, creamy counterpoint. It marked the dish as the product of smart thinking and skilled execution, not just righteous purchasing. Locavore letdown alert: the tomatoes didn’t come from the couple’s limited garden. This is a densely populated section of Brooklyn we’re talking about, not Sunnybrook Farms.

A spinach salad was similarly impressive. Could spinach salad sound less sexy, or more like an ascetic Midtown lunch on the go? I loved James’s. Each gorgeous, unblemished leaf was crisp and only lightly dressed with a balsamic vinaigrette, and shiitake mushrooms and Parmesan cheese made sure there was plenty of umami afoot. The salad had a deep, satisfying flavor.

The seared scallops over a watercress purée in another appetizer and the grilled prawns over a sunchoke purée in yet another had been cooked with care and dressed up with restraint and sound judgment. Mr. Calvert’s time years ago in the kitchens at Bouley and at Union Pacific was well spent. For the most part he combines flavors sensibly, and he doesn’t lose sight of a dish’s centerpiece attraction.

An entree of roasted chicken, brightened with lemon thyme, hit its mark — crunchy skin, tender meat — both times I had it. A roasted loin of lamb was even better, its powdery coat of pine nuts and rosemary enhancing the luscious meat without eclipsing it.

And for a sweet finish both a chocolate ganache cake and a grilled lemon pound cake provided the uncomplicated pleasure I sought in this kind of setting, steering clear of the excessive fussiness of a few other desserts.

James certainly has weak spots, inconsistencies, befuddlements. Mr. Calvert seems to be struggling to nail the rhubarb honey glaze with crispy sweetbreads: it was medicinal one time, borderline cloying another. His fettuccine with shiitake and Manchego was a dry, bland heap of pasta crying out for something wet, something more.

The restaurant’s brief wine list, while sensible, won’t wow anyone, though James provides a full bar, which many restaurants like it don’t. And it mixes a few winning cocktails, including one with gin, St. Germain, lemon juice and fresh mint, often plucked from the garden nearby. Vice linking arms with virtue: that’s a partnership we can all surely toast.


605 Carlton Avenue (St. Marks Avenue), Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, (718) 942-4255.

ATMOSPHERE About 45 seats, 15 of them bar stools, in a simple, inviting room with a pressed tin ceiling.

SOUND LEVEL Moderately loud.

RECOMMENDED DISHES Spinach salad; tomato salad; scallops; lamb; roasted chicken; shell steak; chocolate ganache cake; lemon almond pound cake.

WINE LIST Short and mostly Western European; most bottles under $50.

PRICE RANGE Appetizers, $8 to $16; entrees, $14 to $29; desserts, $8 to $10.

HOURS From 5:30 to 11 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday.

RESERVATIONS Accepted only for parties of six or more.

CREDIT CARDS All major cards.

WHEELCHAIR ACCESS Entrance and restaurant at street level; accessible restroom.

James; The General Greene
Two new restaurants try to up the culinary ante in Kings County.
Time Out New York / Issue 673 : Aug 20–26, 2008
By Jay Cheshes

James, 605 Carlton Ave at St. Marks Ave, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn (718-942-4255). Subway: B, Q to Seventh Ave; 2, 3 to Bergen St. Tue–Sun 5:30–11pm. Average main course: $22. Note: James is closed for vacation Sun 24–Sept 1.

The General Greene, 229 DeKalb Ave at Clermont Ave, Fort Greene, Brooklyn (718-222-1510). Subway: B, M, Q, R to DeKalb Ave; G to Clinton–Washington Aves. Tue–Sat 5–11pm; Sun 5–10pm. Average small plate: $9.

Recently, Brooklyn brownstones began buzzing about James and the General Greene, emerging hot spots angling to join the likes of Franny’s and Dressler in the borough’s new destination restaurant pantheon. Both feature pedigreed chefs, bespoke cocktail lists, and the sort of vibrant, homey, Greenmarket cuisine that has become a hallmark of the upwardly mobile restaurant scene.

James, located on a residential block in Prospect Heights, is the more successful of the two. Chef Bryan Calvert, who runs the place with his wife, Deborah Williamson, cooked at Bouley and Union Pacific, and the restaurant takes itself seriously enough to post photos of a certain food critic over its cash register. Still, it remains in its soul a neighborhood spot, with moderate prices, a no-reservation policy and just 30 seats.

Its prime corner digs, bathed in radiant natural light, attracts a mature stroller crowd. A portrait of the venue’s namesake—Calvert’s great-great-grandfather, a 19th-century Bronx restaurateur—hangs over the door to the kitchen. Other of-the-moment design touches—a modern chandelier, bare filament bulbs, one distressed concrete wall—speak to the restaurant’s seriousness of purpose. As do its very fine cocktails, including the signature James’ Revenge, a balanced libation combining muddled kumquats with Cointreau and rye.

Even with solid opening crowds, the owners haven’t gotten complacent. In the two weeks that passed between my first and second visits, the place had evolved from being better than average to verging on great. A blasé waiter—neglectful that first visit, nowhere to be seen on the second—gave way to an amiable, doting waitress. And the food seemed brighter, more boisterous, more expertly cooked. Beautiful late-summer heirloom tomato slices, stacked in a rainbow pyramid, were bathed in rich goat-cheese dressing. Diver scallops, two gorgeous specimens with a golden sear, were perched atop roasted corn salad and a bracing watercress puree. A whole trout entrée featured fresh, crisp-skinned fillets, secured together by scallion twine, sandwiching a nutty herb-hazelnut stuffing. The grass-fed burger, de rigueur these days, consisted of a not-at-all-gamey patty, a grilled soft brioche bun, pickle slices, Greenmarket lettuces and slim skin-on fries. Among the new burger crop, it’s as close as I’ve found to real perfection.

While James surpasses expectations, the General Greene—the more hotly anticipated of the two, with an enticing menu and celebrated consulting chef—fails to live up to the hype. On a busy corner in Fort Greene, the restaurant features uncomfortable picnic tables and repurposed tractor seat stools in front of a butcher-block bar. The frenetic gastrodiner is the debut solo project of pastry chef Nicholas Morgenstern, a veteran of Daniel and Gilt. To help on the savory end he recruited Ryan Skeen (Resto). Their shareable small plates are heavy on carnivore catnip—featuring pork ribs, grilled steak, mini meatballs and candied bacon, among other dishes.

Even for glorified tapas, however, the General Greene’s portions are small, which explains how our party of four managed to plow through 13 savory dishes one night and still have plenty of room for dessert. Ham-and-Gruyère bread pudding—an irresistible cross between French toast and a croque-monsieur—was gone in three or four bites. The minuscule serving of candied bacon, meanwhile, was too fatty and chewy to be worth fighting over. And dense pork meatballs in tomato gravy, while appealing enough, were not nearly as memorable as the veal-and-Gruyère-packed versions Skeen offered at Resto. Nor, for that matter, did his new burger—a compact cheddar-topped handful on a standard-issue supermarket bun—live up to the fine reputation of the one served at his last post. Other dishes were even more of a yawn. “Crispy” chicken turned out to be a bland roasted thigh and leg on the bone.

At James, the last course—too-mushy ricotta beignets, a seen-it-before warm chocolate cake—was by far the most disappointing. Given Morgenstern’s background, you’d expect the General Greene to come through with a more impressive finale. While his rich chocolate-hazelnut pudding (think Nutella in pudding form) and generous buttery peach crisp did in fact deliver on their promise, not much else did. Which brings us to the perfect meal, if it weren’t so inconvenient: dinner at the one place and dessert at the other.