Brunch has been massive for the restaurant’s whole 16-year run.
Photograph: Liz Clayman
Like Caputo’s Bake Store from 1904 and the Episcopal church in-built 1884, Buttermilk Channel in Carroll Gardens is a time capsule from one other period, albeit one which’s barely more moderen. Open since 2008, the restaurant’s house-made pickles and cheddar waffles with buttermilk fried hen name again to the years of selvedge denim and artisanal mayonnaise. But when the menu feels dated in 2024, that’s solely as a result of the restaurant’s many regulars wouldn’t let proprietor Doug Crowell change it. “{Our relationships} with our prospects are actually deep,” Crowell says. “I imply, their youngsters grew up consuming right here.”
However now, 16 years after opening, Crowell is closing the restaurant to find time for different initiatives, together with the Boerum Hill bistro French Louie that he runs alongside Ryan Angulo and which not too long ago turned a decade previous. “We’re beginning to refresh it,” says Crowell. “We’re what’s nonetheless working and what must be new.”
For that to occur, Crowell wants to shut Buttermilk Channel, the place he’s the only proprietor. “It’s a really private restaurant for me,” he says. “I can’t put it on cruise management or give it to different folks. I’ve my eyes and palms on each element.” Its final day is December 31.
Two Buttermilk Channel outposts in Japan will keep open, and Crowell hints he could reopen the restaurant in one other location if the circumstances are proper. That’s not a lot comfort for the restaurant’s regulars, who discovered concerning the closure in an e-mail.
Via the years, Buttermilk Channel provided the form of comfy area — paper on the tables that youngsters may scribble with crayons, out of doors seating for brunch on good days — and easygoing meals (duck meatloaf, fluffy pancakes, heat lamb salad with sturdy greens and a soft-boiled egg) that appealed to the world’s many households, and it rapidly grew to become a mainstay.
“It’s heartbreaking,” says Matt Polevoy, who lives in Park Slope. He and his spouse have been eating on the restaurant for years. They recall stumbling into the eating room throughout a nor’easter when nothing else was open to order a pecan-pie sundae. In 2015, they acquired married at Metropolis Corridor — then had dinner on the communal desk within the again. “It was excellent,” he says. “That’s how I’ll do not forget that place.”
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