Openings
Foragers Market
No matter what Brooklyn real-estate agents say, a neighborhood doesn’t officially happen until it gets its own top-notch fancy-food emporium: What was South Williamsburg, after all, before Marlow & Sons, Park Slope before Blue Apron, or Cobble Hill before Tuller Premium Foods? Now, with Foragers Market, a spacious new shop run by Anna Castellani, the owner of the Dumbo General Store, and her three artist partners, Dumbo has a food fetishist’s paradise to call its own. You’ll find everything from June Taylor jams to Benedetto Cavalieri pastas on the artfully stocked shelves, and there are eye-catching departments for meat and poultry, charcuterie, seafood, and prepared foods. Not to mention 150 cheeses.
56 Adams St., at Front St., Dumbo, Brooklyn; 718-801-8400
Ureña
Alex Ureña has been working in New York kitchens almost since he arrived from the Dominican Republic at age 15. He started out washing dishes at the River Café before graduating to pastry and garde-manger, spent nine years with David Bouley, opened Blue Hill with Dan Barber, and became executive chef at Marseille and Suba. Between gigs, he ricocheted around France and Spain, soaking up experience from masters like Roger Vergé and Ferran Adrià. Stimulated by Spain’s gastronomic revolution and its pervasive effect on the culinary avant-garde, Ureña officially joins their ranks this month with his modern Spanish restaurant, the kind of place that assumes a certain foodie familiarity with phrases like mustard paper and chorizo emulsion. Like-minded pastry chef Caryn Stabinsky, a WD-50 alum, bakes her own bread and takes a playful approach to dessert—one of them, called “Breakfast,” involves wheat toast cake, Bulgarian feta, maple caramel, and rosemary oil.
37 E. 28th St., nr. Park Ave. S.; 212-213-2328
Room 4 Dessert
The long, narrow Soho space that was Bar Veloce, then Bar Tonno, and finally Bar Sasa is reborn once more, this time with a confectionery bent and a provocative pastry chef installed in the open kitchen. Will Goldfarb, best remembered for his dessert derring-do at Papillon and Cru, was enlisted by a pair of French private chefs who wanted a dessert bar to call their own. Goldfarb focuses on high-concept thematic tastings, often grouped in quartets and based on ideas like “Infance” (cotton candy and meringue), and a curry-scented “Voyage to India,” all of which can be paired with quartinos of wine or pots of exotic tea.
17 Cleveland Pl., nr. Kenmare St. 212-941-5405
Shopping
Case Study
Sixpoint Craft Ales, the little Red Hook microbrewery-that-could, can be found on tap everywhere from Tía Pol to the Modern. This week, brewmaster Shane Welch launches his first bottled beer, the large-format Bolshoi! Russian Imperial Stout, a limited 100-case release. Beer geeks can get first crack at Bierkraft, Park Slope’s suds emporium, where the 22-ounce bottles go on sale between 6 and 9 p.m. on January 19 ($18.99 on 1/19, $19.99 thereafter).