News from Brooklyn and Tokyo
Confidant opens in Brooklyn Heights and a Pizza Studio Tamaki pops up.
Confidant
Our beloved Colonie closed last year, but starting tomorrow it will be Confidant, a beautiful spot from two guys who hope to keep the good neighborhood vibes going. They’re also planning a second restaurant next door, in the former Pips space where partner and pastry chef Mariah Neston (she is AMAZING) will run a hyper-seasonal all-day bakery and evening pizza and wine bar. They’re calling it Lou & Bev’s, named for her grandmothers who were so influential to her culinary journey.
Now, more about Confidant. This is the restaurant from chef/owners Brendan Kelley (Aska and Per Se) and Daniel Grossman (Gage & Tollner and Foul Witch), which first debuted to acclaim in Industry City in 2025. When I visited with my friend Dana, I was blown away, but the locale was not the right match for the food and the concept; Industry City is not the right place for a flagship chef-driven space.
As in life, sometimes do-overs are where we shine. At the new Confidant, the chefs, best friends and former roommates, have found the perfect trifecta: an elevated modern American concept, set in a warm, inviting space, in a neighborhood eager for a return of a beloved mainstay.
At Confidant 2.0, they plan a menu that’s similar to its OG culinary program, highlighting farmers and makers, seasonal ingredients, and showcasing seriously inventive and intricate, in-house techniques and dry-aging preparations. There are some signatures that you may recall from the first go: the Trout Mousse, a dish Brendan has been adapting for nearly a decade, with rainbow trout from Pennsylvania with shallots, garlic, white wine, heavy cream and lemon thyme, piped onto grilled sourdough and topped with smoked trout roe and dill (pictured below).
They’re also bringing back their puffed-up Prawn Pot Pie, their Hudson Valley Duck Breast, dry-aged for 1-2 weeks, served with grilled maitake mushrooms and confit shallot, and drizzled with a date jus; and their Dry-Aged Steak served like a checkerboard in rectangular slices brushed with beef fat salsa verde interspersed with dollops of light-as-air potato foam. They’re debuting a rotating Fish of the Day with gigante beans, mushroom garum – which the team has been fermenting for over a year (!).
The menu is aiming to deliver something a bit more than just neighborhood fare, but still remain approachable enough for every night of the week so they’re adding a trio of delicious pastas – a cavatelli with white rabbit ragu finished with horseradish and fiore sardo; an umami-forward Spaghetti al Funghi, made from rich winter mushrooms sautéed in garlic and serrano pepper, amped up seaweed butter and white wine and topped with gremolata breadcrumbs; and a spicy mezze rigatoni built for cold days heated up with nduja and Calabrian chilis.
They’re also doing some plates I’d love to see scattered across a table filled with friends: braised fennel grilled and paired with oro blanco topped with burnt scallion oil, chili vinegar, and oregano, something caled “Brassicas,” a bagna cauda with romanesco, cauliflower, and broccoli garnished with garlic chips and edible flowers; and a kombu-marinated grilled Caraflex cabbage. Yum.
Don’t sleep in the desserts here friends; this is the place you actually might consider going just for dessert (well soon you can do that next door at Lou & Bev’s). Pastry chef Mariah Neston is bringing back her Malted Mille Feuille, chocolate crêpe dentelles stacked between layers of hazelnut cremeux and coffee diplomat cream; and Biscuit Tortoni, an almond praline semifreddo with dried cherries topped with mascarpone and crushed amaretti cookies; alongside the new Banoffee Sundae—banana ice cream, butterscotch toffee, and buttered brioche crumbs; and Citrus Tart made with Bergamot curd, sesame white chocolate ganache, and halva.
Cocktails are pretty fantastic as well overseen by bar man Charlie Szur. He’s doing an M&M Negroni with mezcal, amaro, vermouth, and blood orange; Petit Déjeuner #2 featuring rum, guava, adjusted pineapple, chinotto nero, and crème de cacao; gin-based Saler’s Delight with Lillet Blanc, Salers, green chartreuse, and tonic; and the beloved, returning Confidant Martini, which can be prepared with gin or vodka alongside dry vermouth, Symphony 6, and vetiver. The all-natural wine list features over 75 bottles and 10 by-the-glass options, with a focus on approachable Old World wines.
“We are excited to serve the community,” Dan told me. “The past year has helped us figure out who we are as chefs. We are making food we love and we want to be a neighborhood restaurant that has a refinement.”
“We are super excited about this neighborhood,” Brendan added when we chatted yesterday on the phone. “As soon as we walked the spaces and walked around we realized it was everything we were looking for. It’s a great community that is so sad that Colonie closed, but so many people are popping in. We are getting to know our neighbors which is so special.”
Confidant opens tomorrow, Wednesday February 4th at 127 Atlantic Ave, and will serve dinner to start Wednesdays through Sundays, 5pm-10pm.
Pizza Studio Tamaki
Before I let you go, one more thing. I had a chance to try Chef Tsubasa Tamaki’s famed pies last night at a media event. Holy smokes my friends, this pizza is outrageously good.
If you haven’t heard, this Tokyo-style Neopolitan pizza place, Pizza Studio Tamaki, will open this spring in the Moody Tongue space on St. Marks and Avenue A. The chef is here now just to do a few (now sold out) pop-ups and get people to understand why his pizza is rather different than anything you’ve ever had before. I’m not saying this is the best pizza in New York, because I would be inviting a torrent of words from pizza nerds, but it is wildly and insistently delicious and very different in a few key ways.
If you have a chance, check out the terrific piece Pete Wells wrote about it, but what makes this pizza sing like Beyoncé in the shower is the dough; it took chef Tamaki nearly 700 attempts to get the right blend of American and Japanese wheat, and then it goes down for 30 hours of fermenting before it’s fired at 480 degrees.
The dough is actually like nothing I’ve ever tasted before; it’s got a lightness, almost like a whisper weight veil, but it’s still sturdy, puffy, and substantial; It tastes like the lovechild of a French crepe and an airy yeasty sourdough. Once the dough is done leavening, he shapes it with a series of tugs and pulls to develop the “cornicione” or the crust, a belt of hills and bubbles, that borders the pie like a charred mountain range.
But there’s one more thing: the magic comes from salt. Tamaki’s thing is that he tosses flaky sea salt on the bottom of the oven first, and then lays the pizza on top, which sort of turns up the flavor on like the volume dial on a radio. It is sensational, like watching Heated Rivalry, I could not stop.
PST is located at 123 St. Marks Place. There’s a pop up tonight and tomorrow from 6pm-11pm, if you can maybe try to get on the wait-list; between 6-11pm. Chef out the Moody Tongue website for cancellations too.
if u can believe there are MANY of these jp style neapolitan joints in japan and not just in tokyo
I had a chance to enjoy this pizza in Tokyo a few years ago. it was a highlight of my trip.