Battersby
In 2002, Walker Stern and Joe Ogrodnek pitched a dream while completing their culinary education. After graduation, that dream took shape: the two held enviable careers all across New York at several of the most lucrative establishments in the culinary world. And since opening their first eatery in 2011, that dream has doubled, somehow tripled, in size. Named after the street in Philadelphia where Ogrodneck grew up, Battersby, Stern’s and Ogrodnek co-owned Brooklyn restaurant, is the sophisticated, cozy, and incredibly popular that helped, in part, set the tone for a new era of eating.
In a 2012 review by the New York Times, Times’ critic Ligaya Mishan was quick to point out that the chefs and dinner guests at the Cobble Hill restaurant are working in incredibly intimate quarters. But while the commentary on space isn’t exactly revelatory — restaurateurs and dinner guests all over New York have been working against the need for more elbowroom for years — the “spontaneous tasting menu” is most clearly what caught their attention. Mishan writes that the spontaneous menu changes at least three times per week, if not more. And The Infatuation, a new-age site that offers food reviews for “real people,” only confirms the Times’ position: “While you can order a la carte, the tasting menu is how you do Battersby right — it’s everything a tasting menu should be (but so often isn’t): each course is a fully-formed meal in its own right, and each thing that comes out is better than what came before it.
Among the standouts on its menu is the rosemary flatbread (which is, for the record, not even listed on its menu). Stern and Ogrodnek ship this out to every new table — and the best part is that the baking is done in-house. Battersby is open Monday through Saturday from 5:30 p.m. until 11 p.m. and on Sundays from 5:30 p.m. until 10 p.m.
