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, 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.

Sunshine for News

Bryan Calvert, the chef, has a short commute. He lives just above the restaurant and just beneath his rooftop garden - 600 square feet of mint, sage, rosemary, thyme, chamomile, oregano, lovage, lavender and basil. Sooner or later, they make their way downstairs. Some go to the oven, to the grill, into the drinks, and others simply perfume the room..

In other restaurants, such a wealth of herbs could mean a plateful of shrubs, a culinary potpourri. But in Calvert's kitchen, each herb plays the part he assigns it. The rosemary never upstages the lamb. The lovage never outshines the potatoes.

Calvert's a talented young chef. He worked at Union Pacific and Bouley before becoming a private chef for Annie Liebovitz. But at James, he's created a genuine, neighborhood restaurant.

This doesn't necessarily mean the food is modest. I adored several things on the menu. The sautéed skate is elegant, a golden fan that conceals perfectly lovaged potatoes surrounded by a tangy caper and sherry sauce. There's no better canvas for fresh herbs than a blank chicken. And the roast chicken at James is a minor masterpiece, crispy, tinged with lemon thyme served over couscous.

Béatrice de Géa for The New York Times

Now there’s fighting words. But bartenders in this venerably beery borough seem, increasingly, to be reaching for a heavy-bottomed bottle of Champagne, rather than a long-necked bottle of beer. Not that they’re pouring it, unaccompanied, into delicate flutes — Brooklyn’s gentrification hasn’t swung that far yet. Instead, they’re mixing it into the high-minded cocktails that have come leaping across the East River with the recent incursion of Manhattan-style cocktaileries, and yes, also into beer.

Witness the Champagne Cup, a mixture of brandy, Benedictine, maraschino liqueur and Champagne, at the Jakewalk, a Carroll Gardens wine, cheese and cocktail bar that opened in the spring. Or the Grand Dame at Quarter Bar, which opened last summer on Fifth Avenue in South Slope; in the Grand Dame, oranges and cherries are muddled with sugar and orange bitters, then shaken with bourbon, strained, and topped with a float of dry sparkling wine. At Botanica, which opened last week in Red Hook, the Champagne, along with absinthe, is going into an opalescent, Hemingway-inspired drink called Death in the Afternoon.

And then there’s James, a Prospect Heights restaurant that opened last month on the corner of Carlton and St. Mark’s Avenues. With just 30 seats at tables, and 15 seats at the bar, James has a charmingly compressed feel, with a pressed-tin ceiling and walls mostly unadorned save for the mustachioed visage of James Calvert, a 19th-century Harlem restaurateur and ancestor of one of the owners. James’s owners, the husband-and-wife team of Bryan Calvert and Deborah Williamson, devised a compressed cocktail list, too. There are five drinks on the menu; Champagne figures into three of them.

“We like easily quaffed drinks,” Mr. Calvert said. “Nothing too heavy, and nothing too sweet. With Champagne, you get that nice dry effervescence.” That effervescence shows up in James’s Ginger Fizz, in which ginger-infused vodka meets ginger beer, mint and Champagne, and in the Framboise Royale, a simple mix of crème de framboise liqueur and Champagne. But the drink that grounds the restaurant in the new, cork-popping Brooklyn is the Black Velvet.

This is an old drink. Traditionally a 50-50 mix of stout (Guinness, almost invariably) and Champagne, it’s reported to have been created to honor the passing of England’s Prince Albert in 1861. “So it’s got that Old World feel,” Mr. Calvert said. “And we wanted something beer-based, which, in Brooklyn, seemed appropriate.” James veers from the standard recipe, however, by melding the Champagne with a Belgian ale, Leffe Brune, rather than a stout.

It’s a pleasing variation, with the ale’s malty sweetness — its flavor evoking the scorched top of a crème brûlée — bringing a new, lighter dimension to the old pub standard.

If James’s Black Velvet is any indication, beer and Champagne can coexist just fine. Especially, perhaps, in Brooklyn.

BLACK VELVET Adapted from James

4 ounces chilled Leffe Brune (or any Belgian ale)

4 ounces chilled Champagne.

Pour the Leffe Brune into a Champagne flute. Allow the foam to settle slightly, then top with Champagne and serve.

Yield: 1 serving

Bryan Calvert, left, in his restaurant with his cousin Tom Calvert. - Photo: Michael Nagle for The New York Times

HANGING on a wall at James, a new restaurant in the ground floor of an apartment building in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, is a captivating painting of a nattily dressed man whose dark eyes seem to be watching the diners. His swept-back hair, pale complexion and handlebar mustache suggest a turn-of-the-last-century British provenance, as does the inscrutable expression.

Since the restaurant opened in June, patrons have been asking the owners, Bryan Calvert and Deborah Williamson, about the man in the portrait and wondering why it hangs in so conspicuous a place.

Naturally, there’s a story to tell.

The painting was hung by Mr. Calvert, a chef, and his wife, Ms. Williamson, an events producer, who live above the restaurant. When the previous tenant, another restaurant, announced it was closing, the couple decided to open their own place (Mr. Calvert had cooked at Union Pacific and Bouley Bakery, among other spots). And in designing the space, they incorporated elements of Mr. Calvert’s family, which has deep roots in the city.

The man in the portrait is James Calvert, Bryan’s great-grandfather, an English horse groomer who came to New York in 1880. Settling in Harlem, James worked as a private cook for a wealthy family and then opened a restaurant, which closed after only a few years because, according to family lore, his partner ran off with the profits.

He later returned to being a private cook and died in 1931, at the age of 69.

Much of what is known about James comes from Bryan’s cousin Tom Calvert. A police detective in Nassau County, Tom Calvert has spent several years going through family papers and examining census and genealogical data to piece together a Calvert family history.

For Bryan Calvert, the parallels between his life and his great-grandfather’s were compelling. Like James, Bryan worked as a private chef in New York (in his case, for the photographer Annie Leibovitz) and now he, too, was opening a restaurant. He decided to name the place after his ancestors, and his cousin redoubled his efforts to uncover more family history.

Tom Calvert found several photographs of James, including a picture of him as an old man on his stoop in Harlem. The original of the image that hangs in the restaurant was too fragile to be restored, so a copy was commissioned from a Brazilian artist who works out of a tiny studio near the Brazilian Consulate and dresses in a three-piece suit, like a 1930s gangster. “He did a beautiful job, ” Tom Calvert said.

The most revealing discovery was a notebook kept by James’s wife, Annie, an Irish immigrant who met her husband when they worked as domestics in the same household. The book is yellowed by age and contains layers of writing, making it nearly as hard as hieroglyphics to decipher, but its pages, a mix of the prosaic (coal receipts) and the poignant (a listing of the names and birth dates of Annie’s children, interspersed with the deaths of three of them), offer a window into the couple’s day-to-day life.

A recreated image from the notebook is delivered to diners with their checks; another element that pays tribute to the past is a drink (rye, Cointreau, bitters, sweet vermouth and kumquat juice) called James’s Revenge.

“That’s the tragedy of it, that he lost the restaurant,” Bryan Calvert said, adding with a wry smile, “As part of this, we’re going to track down the family of his former partner and sue them.”