- Address:288 Smith Street
- Phone: (718) 596-3335
- Subway: F to Smith Street
- Cross Streets: Union and Sackett Streets
- Neighborhood: Carroll Gardens
- Price: Appetizers about $15, dinner entrees $25 and $30. Lunch $15 to $20.
- Website:"Grocery"
Pros
- Excellent food, fresh ingredients
- Beautiful presentation
- Friendly owners greet customers
- Outdoors dining in lovely back yard
- Chef is attentive to food allergies if stated
- Family-friendly
Cons
- Pricey
- Tiny space: Tables are very close. Therefore, dining room can be loud
- No waiting alcove; customers have complained about waiting outdoors in bad weather
- May need a reservation
- Wine and beer only
The Grocery At-a-Glance
The Grocery is a much beloved Carroll Gardens favorite that’s more than held its own even as this "hot Brooklyn neighborhood"'s stable of restaurants has expanded dramatically.
Menu at the Grocery Restaurant in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn
The Grocery's seasonal dinner menus include excellent, delicious combinations of color and texture, though you'd need a PhD in Phood to remember all the ingredients that go into each dish.
For instance, this small Smith Street restaurant turns out an excellent tile fish. It's cooked in parchment over a bed of shitake mushrooms, shell beans, spaghetti squash and couscous — all seasoned with lemon, ginger, garlic, white wine and shiso.
Even as humble a dish as baked pasta is re-imagined with zip. Forget the old Italian Carroll Gardens baked pasta with red sauce and a little cheese.
Here, the chef combines pasta with lobster, braised leeks, scallion, stewed tomatoes, and roasted peppers.
The slow-cooked, chili-braised Duroc pork shoulder is served with a healthy combination of polenta, Savoy cabbage, kohlrabi and radish slaw.
It's all delicious, in a thoughtful sort of way.
Desserts, should you make it to the finish line still hungry, feature such comfort-food concoctions as gingerbread steamed pudding poached with quince and served with sour cream, and buttermilk panna cotta with black currant sorbet.
The wine list runs the gamut from a serviceable eleven dollar glass of chardonnay to a $300 bottle of a rare 2005 Grenache from Manfred Krankl.
Lunch is a more modest affair. But the chef's flair for excellence prevails, whether you’re munching on a grass-fed burger with homemade pickles with a side of sourdough onion rings, or a barbecue duck sandwich made with pickled hot peppers and coffee barbecue sauce.
Understated Ambiance, Affable Owners
The understated ambiance at this tiny restaurant is a good backdrop for its beautifully presented, classy food, rather like a gray tailored suit worn to offset an expensive scarf.
Husband-and-wife chef-owners, Sharon Pachter and Charles Kiely, make it their business to say a gentle, personal hello to the clientele. No dinner goes by, it seems, without some delicious extra morsel arriving as a surprise, compliments of the chef. No wonder it's a neighborhood favorite.
Reserve in Advance
Reserve in advance to get a table at The Grocery on Smith Street, a pioneer of the so-called New Brooklyn Cuisine.
The restaurant is open for lunch and dinner; closed on Sunday and Monday.