BK bound.

One of the best espresso shots in Queens is crossing Newton Creek to Williamsburg. On Monday, Sweetleaf, the prized Long Island City coffee shop, is opening a new location on Kent and North 6th where it will do battle with other serious pours like nearby Toby’s Estate Coffee and Blue Bottle. Owner Rich Nieto’s weapon of choice is his trusty La Marzocco Strada EP, broken in at the LIC shop and ready for action. Beans will hail mainly from Ritual, Heart, and Stumptown, though Nieto plans to bring in “guest” beans for special runs once they’re settled in the new digs.

The Williamsburg location will see an expanded pour-over program, which will occupy a long length of the bar. As for eats, this Sweetleaf will open with a simple menu of some of the same freshly made pastries and muffins served in Queens.

The space is designed to pick up on the industrial vibe of the neighborhood — lots of metal and reclaimed wood; the bar itself is fashioned mostly of antique doors. But Sweetleaf will come equipped with one asset no other Williamsburg coffee shop can claim: Nieto has installed a foosball table in the shop’s standing area. And lest you think the Brooklyn address means Sweetleaf has abandoned its LIC roots, there are already plans for a second location there to be opened somewhere near the river in the next four or five months.

Sweetleaf, 135 Kent Ave., at N. 6th St.

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Filed Under: coffee buzz, coffee, coffee wire, long island city, openings, sweetleaf, williamsburg

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A rendering of the greenhouse.

New York’s rooftop farming trend has been gaining steam: Green patches, beehives, and even micro fish hatcheries have cropped up on top of brownstones and skyscrapers. But the urban-agriculture boomlet is about to get a turbo boost. On Thursday, a company called BrightFarms will unveil plans for a massive garden in the sky, a 100,000-square-foot hydroponic greenhouse atop a warehouse in Sunset Park. When fully up and running later this year, BrightFarms says the operation will harvest 1 million pounds of local produce per year — enough to keep 5,000 New Yorkers in salads.

BrightFarms’ long-term goal is to plant more micro-greenhouses above supermarkets and restaurants all over the city, so the picked-to-plate lag for lettuces, cucumbers, kale, herbs, and several varieties of tomatoes would be reduced to hours. Spared the up-to-six-day journey by truck from West Coast farms, these veggies would taste way fresher — they also require less water and no chemicals to grow.

Details aren’t out yet on who will be selling the bounty of the Sunset Park rooftop, but BrightFarms is in talks with major supermarkets. And they have some big-name support: Mario Batali, always keen on serving fresh produce at his restaurants, is supporting the venture by appearing at Thursday’s launch. No word yet on whether we can expect to dine on BrightFarms-grown tomatoes at our next Babbo pasta feed, but here’s hoping.

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Filed Under: urban farming, brightfarms, mario batali, sunset park

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Untitled’s new menu starts Thursday.

Hopefully you caught Untitled’s pastrami Reuben in the Robs’ gut-busting roundup this week; now comes further news from Danny Meyer’s Whitney Museum restaurant. Grub has gotten our hands exclusively on the dinner menu for the à la carte program, which launches Thursday.

During the evening hours, you’ll have to sate sandwich cravings with a trout BLT or a pimento grilled cheese. (Pro Tip: The extraordinary pimento cheeseburger won’t make an appearance, at least at first, but guests in the know can — and should — order it off-menu.) There’s also promising-sounding plate of lamb meatballs with Beluga lentils, and a pork chop that comes with bacon bread-pudding. We hear the cocktail list is getting turbo-charged with an injection of Stumptown coffees, though exact details are still in the works. Check out the new dinner menu below.

Dinner Menu [PDF]

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Filed Under: menu changes, danny meyer, menus, the whitney, untitled, upper east side

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Change is afoot at Untitled.

Not long ago, Danny Meyer’s Untitled at the Whitney launched a $46 three-course farm-to-table dinner three nights a week. But nine months later, they’re changing it up again. Instead of the fixed-price, no-additions, no-substitutions meals, chef Chris Bradley will offer an expanded dinner menu with about six appetizers and six entrees — all with a focus on what’s seasonal and local. Offerings will change weekly according to Greenmarket wares.

In addition to hearty mains like braised short-rib or ricotta gnocchi, there will also be lighter fare — some of the familiar sandwiches from the lunch menu will reprise after dark, and new ones might rotate in. Unless they sell out at lunch, daytime desserts from Four and Twenty Blackbirds and Betty Bakery will be on the menu, in addition to housemade sweets, a concession to diners who would specially request those items on top of their prix fixe portions. Dinner hours won’t change, so it’s still only Thursday through Saturday nights, but Upper East Siders will have more flexibility to dine as they choose. Look for the new program to launch later this month.

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Filed Under: menu changes, danny meyer, the whitney, untitled, upper east side

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With Shake Shack expanding to Brooklyn, you’d think other burger flippers in the borough would flee. But instead, a new spot that quietly opened on the corner of Smith Street and Baltic on Monday seems to be ready for a fight. Burgersmith, conceived by chefs Blessing Schuman-Strange and Kyle Huebbe, takes a secret blend of grass-fed beef, ground fresh daily at the nearby butcher Paisanos, and griddles them on cast-iron rather than a steel flattop or gas grill. The cast-iron gets you a better press on the patties so they come away a little crustier without overcooking, Schuman-Strange tells us.

There are close to two dozen topping options, or you can pick from nine combos on the menu, including the Trademark: Cheddar cheese and horseradish-chive aiïoli on a Portuguese muffin. This one is already a winner: It took top prize in 2009’s Brooklyn Paper best burger contest and the Brooklyn Burger Bash of the same year.

Most items on the menu are local, sustainable, or organic, and anything that can be made in house is. But there are a few favorite items that the chefs can’t live without that have to be shipped in. That includes green chilies from New Mexico where Schuman-Strange became addicted to them, and those Portuguese muffins that the pair have yet to find anywhere but Cape Cod. The beer list is bottles for now while a tap system is being installed. It’s an impressive compilation of Northeast and Mid-Atlantic brews like McNeill’s IPA — a small-production brewery in Vermont turning out old-world-style beers.

Some of the trappings of the Asian restaurant that previously occupied the space remain — cherry blossom mosaics and a portrait of Chairman Mao. But somehow these aren’t discordant with the woven wood wall behind the bar and the antlers on the walls. Hours are 4 to 11 p.m. daily; see the menu below.

Menu [PDF]

Burgersmith, 209 Smith St., at Baltic St., Cobble Hill; 718-694-2277

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Filed Under: openings, burgers!, burgersmith, cobble hill

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A preview of the cart.

The Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg will now serve you a drink at your seat, and, not to be outdone, Jason Denton’s (‘ino) Indie Food and Wine is looking forward to rolling out its drinks program soon — literally. Libations at the café, which is tucked inside the Elinor Bunin Monroe Film Center, will be poured out of a mod, transportable bar cart designed by the Rockwell Group (the same crew that did the space). The cart will roll into the small dining room at about 5 p.m. each night, offering perfect classic cocktails like martinis and Manhattans. The wine list will offer 40 all-Euro varieties; twenty will go by the glass for $8 to $12.

Denton himself is overseeing the program, and having started his career tending bar at his uncle’s iconic San Francisco restaurant, Harry Denton’s Starlight Room, he’s well versed in old-timey cocktails. For the time being, drinks will only be available in the café, but a rep says they’re hoping to expand the license so the cart can offer its boozy services inside the cinema.

Earlier: Jason Denton to Open Indie Food & Wine at New Lincoln Center Cinemas on September 12

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Filed Under: booze news, indie food and wine, jason denton

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Onegin’s interior looks nearly done.

The brown paper has been taken off the windows at Onegin (pronounced “on again”) on Sixth Avenue, and the restaurant is preparing for an opening later this month. However, there’s one amendment to the record: The spot was said to be a spinoff of Coney Island’s Rasputin, but not so says co-owner Jacob Rivkin. Though two members of the team were former employees, the new venture is not affiliated with the famous Russian restaurant.

The decor offers a mix of antique-y touches (brocades, tufted chairs, and mini-chandeliers abound) and some new-fangled elements: black-and-white text murals and a birch tree “forest,” along with tile floors from the Pizzeria Uno that once occupied the space.

Menu-wise, the idea is to approximate what was eaten in early nineteen-century Russia. “There was not a lot of frying going on back then,” says Rivkin. So, coming out of the traditional Russian oven and the adjacent smoker will be more than the typical blinis caviar service (though they’ll offer that, too). On the pork front, we’re looking at homemade kielbasas, bacon, and suckling pig. But the big reveal will be a house-cured pork belly called salo. Pates and spreads will occupy a sizable portion of the menu under the banner of zakouski — basically Russian pupu platters. There will be duck liver with dried fruit, sturgeon, and a spread made of that pork belly ground down with garlic.

Onegin, 391 Sixth Avenue, nr. Waverly Pl.

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Filed Under: coming soon, greenwich village, onegin, openings, rasputin, russian

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