Barker is located at 395 Nostrand Avenue, between Putnam Avenue and Madison Street, and is currently open on Wednesday through Sunday from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Chefs Gracie Gardner and Henry Wright first met at Blue Hill Stone Barns in 2019. Gardner’s first job there was teaching cooking at the summer camp. Wright arrived on a visa after working in “sister restaurants to fancy places” in Paris and Montreal. The couple started dating, fell in love, eventually moved to Brooklyn, and, when they started talking about opening their own place, agreed on two things.
First, as Gardner told Brooklyn Magazine, “Whatever we did needed to be small enough so we didn’t have to involve outside people as investors, people we’d have to pay back, because that turns a restaurant into a really different kind of machine.”
Second, for quality of life reasons, they didn’t want to fuck around with dinner service, at least not all the time, or right away. “We had been working late nights at restaurants for so long,” said Wright, and knew they wanted to run a daytime place. Wright, who grew up in Vancouver, has a certain nostalgia for chill spots with casual food. “Once or twice a year, my mom would take me out of school, and we would go out and get a grilled cheese and some soup,” he said. “And that’s like my fondest memory of my mother, just as a person who liked a simple lunch in a quiet space.”
(Photo by Scott Lynch)
Add it all up, and Bed-Stuy gets Barker, their fabulous new lunch spot, named after Wright’s mom, and featuring a tight, appealing menu, written out on a chalkboard by the register, of sandwiches, soups, salads, and a few fresh-baked goodies. And, oh man, do these two crazy kids know how to cook.
“We have this history of cooking really straightforward, non-intellectual food,” said Wright, (who also ran the kitchen at Superiority Burger for a minute), “But it’s always from scratch, and we always care a lot. We don’t buy anything that’s pre-made, even when it’s annoying to make it ourselves.” Gardner chimes in, “Our food is like a non-concept concept. We don’t have a ‘take’ on things or a twist. When we make you a sandwich, we make the bread, we make the roast beef, we make the hickory sticks…it takes a lot of time and love, but it’s just whole food.”
Roast beef sandwich with homemade hickory sticks, $16 (Photo by Scott Lynch)
That roast beef sandwich Gardner’s referencing has quickly become Barker’s signature dish, and rightly so. The housemade focaccia is first-rate—fluffy, chewy, with a delightfully crisp shell—the meat cooked rare, sliced thin, slathered in a horseradish sauce, and the whole thing topped with bitter watercress and a mess of those crunchy hickory sticks—basically smoky potato sticks—which are a Canadian thing, I guess?
Maple ham and comté melt, $15 (Photo by Scott Lynch)
Barker’s maple ham and comté melt, housing plenty of seedy mustard, is also wonderful, just a sharp, gooey, soul-soothing classic. The sandwich offerings will change over time, but last weekend I could have also ordered a mushroom melt on polenta bread (I had some of my buddy Luke’s, and it was excellent), and a spiced sweet potato beauty covered in zhug.
Small chicken noodle soup, $8 (Photo by Scott Lynch)
Small winter vegetable soup with a side of aioli, $7 (Photo by Scott Lynch)
All of the above go great with a cup or bowl of soup, of course, which this month means either chicken noodle (meaty, rich, herby, healing), or winter vegetable, a complex broth thick with potatoes, leeks, savoy cabbage, and insanely good when slurped with spoonfuls of the garlicky aioli that comes in a blob on the side. Mayo in soup? Yup.
A couple of salads, including a very good curry chicken littered with rice puffs and bits of dates, offer a solid non-carby option to the sandwiches. And the pastries are delicious. If there are any apple fritters or pear financiers left when you get here, don’t hesitate. I had my treats with a mug of warm mulled apple cider, and it all hit exactly right. There’s also coffee, beer, and wine.
The spread (Photo by Scott Lynch)
The space is long and narrow, with a communal table up front, an eight-stool eating counter running toward a modest dining area, up a few stairs in the back. The vibe is very welcoming, and though not exactly “quiet” like Barker-the-mom’s favorite spots of yore—a solid playlist by the likes of Pet Shop Boys and New Order ensures it never feels sleepy—it’s certainly pleasantly low-key and relaxed in here. And please don’t ruin that with a laptop! Bring a friend or two, and take a break from whatever the hell else is going on in the world.
“People come in and eat and play cards at the bar, they play backgammon, they read a book,” said Gardner. “It feels like they’re using this space in a way that I don’t think would happen if we had opened in, say, the West Village. People are really enjoying themselves here in Brooklyn.”
The post Barker Gets The Lunch Counter Just Right in Bed-Stuy appeared first on BKMAG.
