arring specialty restaurants or novelties like Russian Supper Clubs, Brooklyn could not always compete with Manhattan’s restaurants and culinary snobbery. But the restaurant row that has cropped up over the past few years along the Carroll Gardens leg of Smith Street, just off Atlantic Avenue, has a cuisine savvy clientele. Time Out New York rarely publishes an issue without mention of an up-and-comer or an old favorite this side of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Brooklyn Grill
When Jimmy Henderson moved to Boerum Hill ten years ago, he found few trendy bistros lining the street. Instead, he saw Spanish bodegas and a man hanging out on the corner carrying a machete and a melon. Today, thanks to Henderson and other star chefs, Brooklyn is at the height of a culinary renaissance. During the past five years, Manhattan’s finest chefs have been flocking to Smith Street and around the corner on Atlantic Avenue where cheap rents have translated into affordable top-notch dining.

A former chef at One if by Land, Two if by Sea and Oceana in Manhattan, Jimmy opened Brooklyn Grill three years ago. The week he opened his doors, five other restaurants on Smith Street were doing the same.

“We were all calling each other up saying, ‘Can I borrow this? Can I borrow that?’” he says.
Henderson is quick to describe his restaurant as a neighborhood place where families don’t have to be afraid to bring children. “This is not 61st and Park,” Henderson says.

In an effort to attract young families, Henderson has revamped his menu, adding a $10 burger and an $11 chicken sandwich to the range of $14 to $20 entrees. “We want to let people know that it’s okay to come in and have a burger and a beer,” Henderson says.

The Grill’s New-American cuisine features classics like grilled ribsteak, calf liver and barbeque ribs accompanied with contemporary ingredients like crispy polenta and cranberry salsa. Henderson incorporates sweet, savory and spicy elements into many of his dishes. The spice from his chili-rubbed, cornmeal-crusted shrimp mixes nicely with sweet chipotle and corn sauce. Henderson’s chicken liver mousse is finely whipped, topped with sweet pickled onions and served with toast.

Bratwa
While the Brooklyn Grill offers a moderate-priced alternative to most of Smith Street’s fine dining, Brawta, just across the street on Atlantic Avenue, brings something entirely different to the neighborhood with its delectable menu of Caribbean dishes. Jennifer Ewers, chef and owner, picked the site in hopes of appealing to an ethnically diverse and creative clientele. One of the first businesses on the block, Ewers moved into the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Hoyt Street ten years ago, or as she says, “before Smith Street was Smith Street.”

Ewers’ journey from Alligator Pond, Jamaica, to this corner in Brooklyn took a few detours. In 1979, she opened Fish, Wings and Things with two of her friends in a predominantly West Indian area in Queens. She sold the restaurant in 1984 and briefly helped her sister run a Manhattan restaurant before that too was sold in 1987. Next, Ewers started a catering business, moving into a strategically located Fort Greene house expressly so she would not get complaints about her late-night cooking. In 1992, Ewers expanded to a take-out storefront on Bond Street, naming it Brawta, a Jamaican idiom for “a little extra.” Ewers cooked from her home, carted the food to the restaurant at 11:30 each morning and arranged it so that no one could tell that Brawta did not have a kitchen. Her system worked smoothly until great write-ups appeared in both The New York Times and New York Magazine. When Ewers started running out of food every day by 4 p.m., she knew that it was time to look for a fully equipped restaurant. She opened the Brawta two weeks after receiving another good write up in The New York.

Times; once again she was swamped with a line that stretched out the door. The bright and colorful cafe pays homage to Bob Marley – his likeness is etched on tabletops and photos of him hang from the walls; reggae often plays unobtrusively in the background. Ewers regularly greets a mixed crowd of artists, musicians, Caribbean politicians, tourists and regular ol’ Brooklynites.

In addition to the usual Caribbean fare of jerk chicken and curried goat, Ewers specializes in Jamaican seafood favorites. Conch, a chewy fish similar to lobster, is served in a spicy cream sauce. The jerk shrimp, seasoned with pimento, hot peppers and onions, is tempered by a sweet mango salsa. Vegetarians aren’t forgotten – the ital stew, a mélange of vegetables stewed in coconut milk – is consistently tasty. Entrees run $8 to $10 for chicken, goat and oxtail, and $10 to $16 for seafood.

Brawta also serves a large selection of Caribbean juices, sorrel, mango juice, and peanut punch, to name a few and Ewers plans to offer beer and wine by summertime. She recently opened a take-out place on Seventh Avenue in Park Slope; though she has found success, she has not let it go to her head. “I never said ‘I want to open a restaurant and be rich,’” Ewers said. “I said ‘I’d like to have a restaurant and make really good food.’”

Tripoli
Though the Boerum Hill section of Atlantic Avenue is becoming popular now, the area to the west, Cobble Hill, has long been a well-traveled destination for dining. Tripoli, a 30-year-old family run Lebanese restaurant, is one of the oldest and most popular Middle Eastern restaurants on the avenue.

Tripoli is a grand-looking restaurant, the kind of place that almost transports you to another era. The epitome of a Mediterranean paradise, the room is painted with pictures of palm trees, castles and waves. Mohammed Salem, the owner and a practiced furniture designer, carved the elaborate chairs and intricate wood moldings by hand. He even installed the entire front half of a boat into the restaurant, though it was torn down several years ago when the restaurant was briefly rented out. At one time, the duplex used to be divided into two separate restaurants with the main room, Silver Shore, serving only seafood while the downstairs room served meat dishes and offered belly dancing.

The Salem family has seen both the best and the worst during the three decades that it has owned the restaurant. The restaurant was originally built across the street but that structure was destroyed by a fire in 1982. Omar Salem, Mohammed’s son, 29, said that the authorities determined that the fire was the result of arson, though they never found who did it. He said that whenever there is trouble in the Middle East, Atlantic Avenue businesses suffer. “Our business went down a lot after the Gulf War,” Salem said. “People don’t want to come here because we are supposed to be the enemy.”

Nevertheless, Salem said that the community rallied behind them after the attacks on the World Trade Center, coming in droves during candle-light vigils. “Most people who live in the neighborhood are educated,” Salem said. “They said they wanted to come and show support for their Arab-American neighbors.”

Omar’s father, Mohammed, prefers not to talk about the past – he is concentrating on the future. The senior Salem, a fervent believer in alternative medicine, is in the process of turning the downstairs room into a life-food restaurant, a diet based wholly on raw vegetables, with the help of nutritionist David Jubb. This will be the first restaurant in the U.S. to combine a raw-food diet with Middle Eastern flavors. While that project is in the works, samples of leaf extracts and teas are often left out for customers to try.

Tripoli’s menu is based on family recipes. Many dishes, like coussa b’leban, a fresh squash stuffed with ground lamb, rice and pine nuts and served in a yogurt and mint sauce, are not available at the typical Middle Eastern restaurant. Another unusual favorite is the pumpkin delight, a gooey pumpkin dessert piled under sweet cheese, walnuts, almonds and pistachios. The prices at Tripoli are modest—a sandwich or salad costs between $3 and $5 and entrees start at $7, going up to $14.

Another twist separating Tripoli from other neighborhood haunts – the Salem’s sell imported olive oil from Lebanon both at the restaurant and on-line. Mohammed returns to Lebanon once or twice a year to oversee the harvest. The harvests must be consistently good; The Pierre Hotel and the Four Seasons serve Tripoli’s Tea Tree Olive Oil.