The Vanderbilt

In its Prospect Heights neighborhood, the Vanderbilt is known as “the expensive place.” Mobbed at first and then dismissed for its small portions at higher-than-usual price tags, the Vanderbilt is quieter now. You can actually see the reclaimed wood in the industrial but rustic front room when it’s not jam packed with people, and when you order one of the excellent cocktails at the marble-topped bar, you can hear yourself speak. You can even walk in and get a table. And if you’re from Manhattan, land of the $15 glass of wine, $15 for thick, peppery slabs of hamachi crudo by Brooklyn’s Michelin-starred chef Saul Bolton will seem like a bargain.

The problem seems to be one of clarification: the Vanderbilt was probably never meant to be cheap. It brings Saul’s artisanal, global cuisine from the more formal restaurant on Smith Street to a wider audience via a small plates menu that touches down everywhere from Japan to Germany. Could you go down the street and get bigger portions for less? Yes. If your idea of fancy food involves Hollandaise sauce, then by all means keep walking. But if you want a kitchen that can do artisanal food very well, you’re in the right place.

One of the restaurant’s strengths is its globe-trotting agility. The blistered shishito peppers ($6), served with a whole pile of pimenton salt, were just as good as the blistered peppers you’d find at Nobu, but the house-smoked kielbasa ($10) rivaled Boulud’s at DBGB.

The Vanderbilt’s kielbasa, a recent addition to the menu, has a nice snap and a ton of flavor from garlic and mustard seeds. It’s served with a wonderfully dilly cold potato salad peppered with mustard seeds that takes a turn towards haute Austrian.

The Vanderbilt’s excellent brussels sprouts arrived in a steaming pile of soft but crispy leaves. We guessed they’d been flash fried before getting a dash of lime and sriracha pepper.

That hamachi crudo with crisp radishes, yuzu and ginger ($15) gets a real pop from a sprinkling of pink peppers, and the fish gets a lift from a citrus-ginger marinade. The quality of the thick slabs of hamachi itself was sushi grade—all this for the price of a “monster roll” at a subpar place in Manhattan.

The hanger steak ($16) arrived medium well when we ordered it medium rare, though it was a good, slightly gamey and earthy cut of meat in a wine and shallot sauce. A wedge of romaine embedded with buttermilk dressing served as the side salad.

There’s an advantage to waiting before you give the final verdict on a new place, because the restaurant is a work in progress. When the Vanderbilt first opened and we went there with a vegetarian friend, they offered no vegetarian main courses—in a neighborhood that’s practically ground zero for vegetarianism and food co-ops in New York. Now the Vanderbilt has added some completely vegan items to the “Vegetables” section, getting rid of the polenta soup with duck gizzard confit (horrors!) in favor of artichokes and gratineed Belgian endive. They also seem to have opened up the dining room, with more room between the wooden tables. Service, which was spotty at first, is now good, if slightly bizarre—our wide-eyed waitress was extremely attentive. “Is she stoned?” D. asked me. It seemed more like Xanax.

If you can’t stomach the prices of the Vanderbilt’s food, it’s worth going here just for a cocktail, developed by Brian Floyd of Weather Up. The Glyda Rose ($9), a concoction of gin, Campari, blood oranges and champagne, is a local favorite, and the Belhaven cocktail ($9) will send you straight to its namesake with a potent mixture of mescal and Drambuie.

The Vanderbilt may not be a bargain, but it’s not a rip off either. For these prices you get excellent ingredients and skilled execution of all sorts of small plates, about five of which are enough for two people. Saul Bolton may not have endeared himself to a whole new customer base with this new restaurant, but if you like to experiment with a lot of different flavors in a cool but laid back setting, you’ll find a lot to like at the Vanderbilt.

The Vanderbilt
570 Vanderbilt Avenue at Bergen Street
Prospect Heights, Brooklyn
718-623-0570
thevanderbiltnyc.com