In New York, restaurants often trade on exclusivity. Garnet is betting on the opposite.
The restaurant, set to open Wednesday, Nov. 18, in the former Clover Hill space on Columbia Place, is looking to “decouple the social experience from the commercial one,” said its owner, Benjamin Laufer.
The 26-year-old spent his early childhood in a two-bedroom apartment on Pierrepont Street, until his parents decided to move the family to Roxbury, Connecticut, when their fourth child was on the way.
Brooklyn Heights is “very nostalgia-laced,” Laufer said. “It’s always been a place that I loved coming back to and care a lot about.”
In Roxbury, there was “very little diversity of food,” he said, so he started cooking. Laufer got his first restaurant job in middle school, grating parmesan and peeling peas, then spent a summer working at The Finch in Clinton Hill while he was in high school.
While The Finch introduced him to farmers and food sourcing, the inspiration for Garnet comes from the dining hall at the Mountain School, a farm school in Vermont where Laufer spent the fall of his senior year.
Dining halls can be intimidating, Laufer said. (Think: the “Mean Girls” cafeteria.) They’re “beautiful spaces” where friendships emerge, he said, but also “a place of really significant social stratification.”
At the Mountain School, a seating rule took that sorting out of students’ hands. Instead of choosing a table, students sat next to whoever had walked in just before them, filling the dining hall’s round tables one at a time. It was frowned upon to wait outside so you could walk in with friends, Laufer said.
Sharing meals helped students develop “a baseline level of respect and trust and feelings of reciprocity,” and the same is true of civic life in cities, he said. “When you know your neighbors, you feel more involved in the place you live.”
The restaurant has already brought Brooklyn Heights neighbors together. It’s a “collective barn raising of sorts,” Laufer said. Several dozen friends and neighbors have helped build the space: his friend Napali built the tables; about 30 neighbors wove the chairs at a chair-weaving event; a neighbor on Remsen Street painted the walls; and two neighbors from upstairs and one from around the corner built the shelves.
“It would very much not be possible without them,” he said.
Laufer and his team have posted weekly updates in the window since earlier this year, with designs inspired by the Riverside Building’s ironwork, as a way of bringing the neighborhood along for the build-out. The idea was to make the team feel “more human” to neighbors “and less like just a stranger,” Laufer said. “The hope was ultimately to have them saying hello and knocking on the door and interacting with us.”
That care for the neighborhood extends to the farms that supply Garnet. The restaurant “cares a lot about its extended agricultural community,” Laufer said, sourcing as much as possible directly from farmers in northwestern Connecticut, western Massachusetts and upstate New York.
The menu will change often, sometimes daily and at least every two weeks, Laufer said. At lunch, the goal is approachable, affordable and nourishing food: soups, salads, stews, dips and a few pastries. Garnet will serve lunch Wednesday through Sunday and start dinner service in December.
The rotating menu is partly for the chefs. “When you’re in a kitchen doing the same thing every day over and over and over and over, it starts feeling less like cooking and more like production,” Laufer said. Garnet has no executive chef. Instead, a small, flat team of chefs shares the work in a fully open kitchen, which Laufer hopes “feels much more like a domestic space than a commercial one.”
As for the name, it draws on a family pastime: garnet mining in Roxbury. Laufer said he and his family used to dig up garnets, “totally commercially worthless little stones,” with no intention of selling them. The garnet is also the official gemstone of New York, he learned after landing on the name.
“Part of why it’s named Garnet is I want it to feel much like that familial activity we had growing up,” he said. “We did it purely to spend time with one another.”
Heights Happenings
Brooklyn’s first Empire Bin has landed in Brooklyn Heights. Mayor Zohran Mamdani stopped by Garden Place last week to help install the borough’s first residential Empire Bin. The city is rolling out more than 700 bins in Community District 2. The sealed bins are only accessible to building staff and waste managers — residents can’t access them.
The Brooklyn Folk Festival returns to St. Ann’s Church. The three-day festival presented by the Jalopy Theatre and School of Music will take place Friday, Nov. 6 through Sunday, Nov. 8, with more than 40 bands, vocal and instrumental workshops, film screenings, afterparties every night at Jalopy Tavern and more. The church is also collecting clean coats and warm clothing for New Yorkers in need, including Red Hook residents, throughout the weekend in the Parish Hall. Tickets for the festival here.
Secret Snowflake is back at Books Are Magic. The bookstore is collecting $8 donations, in store or online, through Dec. 12. Each one buys a book for a child in need this holiday season.
A packed room at last week’s BQE town hall. Neighbors filled Borough Hall on Thursday, Oct. 29, to hear the city Department of Transportation’s plan to fix the BQE. The message from elected officials: they share residents’ concerns, but something has to be done. Council Member Lincoln Restler said the alternative, “this highway falling apart before our eyes,” isn’t an option. “We’ve got to do something,” he said. State Sen. Andrew Gounardes said local officials are working “in lockstep” and urged residents to stay involved. To share your thoughts on the proposal, you can submit a formal comment and/or attend one of the public scoping meetings next week. More information here.
23 Middagh St. hit the market for $13 million. The six-bedroom townhouse has an elevator, sauna, garden, roof deck, and primary suite that takes up an entire level. Realtor.com has a video tour of the inside.
Roebling Rink’s opening day party. The ice skating rink in Brooklyn Bridge Park is opening on Saturday, Nov. 14, with free admission for the first two sessions from 10:30 a.m. to noon and 12:30 p.m. to 2 p.m. The opening day lineup also includes: holiday movie screenings throughout the day; craft activities with BBP educators from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Brooklyn Museum’s Museum on Wheels from noon to 4 p.m.; a performance and skating session with drag queen and figure skating champion Milk from 6:30 to 8 p.m.; and a performance from the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus from 8 to 8:30 p.m.
P.S. 8’s PTA raised $1.3 million last school year, according to Gothamist. P.S. 29 in Cobble Hill topped the city at about $2 million. Citywide, the average white student benefited from about $254 in PTA money, compared with $46.30 for the average Black student. PTA money boosts reading and math achievement, Davidson College education professor Brittany Murray told Gothamist, “but it tends to help those that are more affluent.”
A loss in the neighborhood. Hameed Alahri, owner of Penny Bridge Store at the corner of Henry and Clark streets, died on Oct. 30, according to a sign in the store. “He passed peacefully,” his nephew told Pineapple Street.
NYU has opened its free shuttle buses to seniors, including Brooklyn Heights residents. The program lets residents 65 and older in Brooklyn Community Board 2 and Manhattan Community Boards 2 and 3 ride the university’s seven shuttle routes, which run weekdays from 7 a.m. to midnight during the academic year. The pilot’s 50 spots are already full, but there’s a waitlist.
Nearby News
The Brooklyn Eagle is launching a magazine. The debut issue from Brooklyn’s oldest newspaper will feature Dr. Orna Guralnik, Rebecca McCray and more. There’s a launch party at 501 Union on Wednesday, Nov. 18, at 7 p.m. Tickets here.
Opening night of “Dumbo Before the Bridges.” The city unearthed 2,771 artifacts during Dumbo’s six-year street restoration project, some dating back to the early 1800s. The artifacts will be on display alongside historic photographs at the Adams Street Library, with an opening reception tonight from 6 to 7:30 p.m.
The city is holding three public workshops this month on its plans for the Brooklyn Marine Terminal. New York City Economic Development Corp. staff and consultants will take questions on transportation, urban design, the port, resilience and more. Drop in to any session: virtually tonight, from 6 to 8 p.m. (Zoom link); at Christ Church, 326 Clinton St. in Cobble Hill, on Wednesday, Nov. 18, from 6 to 8 p.m. (register); or at the Joseph Miccio Center, 110 W. 9th St. in Red Hook, on Thursday, Nov. 19, from 6 to 8 p.m. (register).
Very excited about Garnet!
LOVE THIS! Can’t wait for it to open.