At Lore, a love story, delicious dosas, and so much more.
One year in, chef Jay Kumar continues to impress in Park Slope.
I love a good dosa, don’t you? And yet I haven’t had a local spot where I can find one in quite a while. That is until recently. But it’s not a takeaway joint like Hampton Chutney was (I loved their dosas). It’s a lovely rather ambitious restaurant, a convivial corner spot in Park Slope that opened a little over a year ago called LORE, from chef and owner Jay Kumar.
I discovered Lore because the restaurant is near to where my son was taking acting classes last year, and so for a few hours every Thursday evening, I would sit at the bar with a book, a glass of wine or a nicely made cocktail, and have a few plates: usually the dosa and whatever salad he was tossing together. It was, and still is, the kind of neighborhood place where you feel comfortable coming in alone to eat at the bar, or with a date for a cozy dinner, with your kids for a Sunday supper, or with a group of enough friends to eat through the entire menu. I’ve done it all, quite happily.
Over the weeks I sat at the bar, I got to know Jay. I learned he was raised in Mangalore, India, by his grandmother and aunt, where he forced his way into the kitchen and learned to cook. “Being a son in India, it’s not like you go into the kitchen. It’s not done. But my family was liberal, and my grandmother let me in,” he said. “And every time there was a big dinner or a holiday, I was always tucked in the kitchen, in between all these older women cooking such amazing food and flavors.”
Jay’s grandmother taught him to make his first dosa, from a bubbly, slightly sour fermented lentil batter, which he admits was not exactly pretty but was quite delicious. “I remember making that first one, and it was nowhere near a circle. I don’t know what shape it was, but it could not taste bad. The batter was perfect.”
During school breaks Jay traveled to the Far East and to Europe with his family and his love of food and cooking grew to the point where he knew he was stuck with it; it would always be part of his life. He left home and moved to Switzerland for culinary and hotel school in 1989 and never returned.
He spent thirty years cooking in Switzerland where he worked for Hilton Hotels and then opened three namesake restaurants in succession: Jay’s Indian, serving classic Indian home cooking in 1999, followed by Jay’s Ackermannsof, a more innovative Indian-inspired kitchen in 2000.
And then, in late 2015, he was diagnosed with cancer of the large intestine. Rather than slow down, he decided, in between brutal radiation treatments, to open a third restaurant, Johann by Jay. “I was going through intense weekly radiation treatments and it was very difficult,” he said. “I was so sick, but I felt I had to reimagine myself. I had to do something to push forward because I was going crazy. That was the only way I could organize myself.”
It was around that time that he was also hired by the Scope Art Festival in Basel to do an on-site coffee shop as well as VIP dinners for their guests and artists. The woman who hired him, Daria Brit Greene, became a friend. Pretty quickly, the friends fell in love, and Jay began making monthly trips to see her in Brooklyn.
Once his cancer was in remission, he was given the okay to move to New York. “I had been in Switzerland for 30 years, and I was 52 years old. But I had never met anyone like Daria. I sold my shares of my restaurants, and flew to Brooklyn in June 2019.”
The timing was not quite ideal. Soon thereafter the pandemic hit, and they moved to a farm upstate, married shortly thereafter, and returned to Brooklyn after COVID calmed down. One day they strolled past the empty Camper Down Elm space on the corner of 7th Avenue and 15th Street. They found the owner, negotiated a quick deal, and opened Lore in February 2022. Don’t you love a good love story that leads to a great Brooklyn restaurant? I sure do.
As Jay explains it, his menu at Lore takes a world view, and explores the foods of his travels and his homeland. I agree; I feel like he’s picked up dishes from the nooks and crannies of his soul and sorted them out for a Brooklyn audience. So…what does this mean exactly?
Well, let’s start with the dosa: The crepe is light as air, delicately crisp, with gentle sour notes from the fermented batter. The dosa gets rolled up into a long thin cylinder, like manicotti, but filled with softly spiced potatoes. It comes with little pots of accent notes: coconut chutney, red lentil daal, and gunpowder (more on that later). It’s just one of a few small plates that are essential at Lore, including any iteration of his Leafy Salad, which is always frilly and fluffy, textured, bright and vibrant, currently served with chickpea croutons, crunchy seeds, and a dressing punched up with nutritional yeast, like a firecracker.
Are you a lamb person? If not, you may soon be one. His Lamb Chapli Kebabs, a typical dish of Northern India, is a rather strong argument for a formal lamb fan club. The dish actually has quite a history. The generations-old story goes that an Indian mughal was a serious food lover, but he lost all his teeth and could not eat his food. His chef innovated with a kebab made from ground up chopped meat that was easy for his toothless sire. Now, please don’t take this as an invitation to leave your teeth at home, but if you did I suppose you would be okay.
Either way, these lamb kebabs are terrific: heated up with ginger, garlic, and chiles and held together just with some rice panko (gluten free, my friends). They come with some olive tapenade that’s made with a South Indian spice mix called gunpowder, a mix of dried lentils, dried chiles, dehydrated garlic, curry leaves, and some mustard seeds, all ground together into a dust that’s toasted and mixed with the olives. There’s also some smoky baba ganoush, and a pulpy tomato confit. The chutneys and olive/gunpowder tapenade are excellent, but these lamb patties have quite enough personality to fly solo.
Vegetarian friends, heck carnivores too, Jay’s menu pays you special attention. You must try his Fried Delicata Squash with chili crisp, black lime yogurt, and pumpkin seeds, a dish that’s like that finding a “Gas, Food, and Lodging” sign on the interstate; it gives you everything you need: spice and tang, crispy and soft, nutty and sweet, all of it.
You may think the Brits make the best fish and chips, but you’d be wrong. The best fish and chips are made by chefs raised in India. (See also Masalawala.) Jay’s gorgeous fish and chips are made with a gluten-free batter that is puffy and golden, creating a robe of crust that breaks off in a crunch to reveal glossy alabaster fish, ready for that tartar sauce or malt vinegar. Don’t expect to share.
Jay’s Hen of the Woods Uttapam, an open-faced pancake cousin to the dosa that’s also from Southern India, is also quite impressive, full of roasted mushrooms and topped with tomato chutney and arugula, yet another one to make your veggie friends unleash a barrage of joyful plant-based hashtags on social media.
Friends, before I forget, you really must not leave Lore without the Sea Bream Ssam—a fish marinated in ginger, fennel, garlic and chilies, baked slowly so you can nudge it with a fork and tuck a piece inside a cup of butter lettuce, and garnish it generously with cucumbers, mint chutney, some chili pepper sauce, and devour. Repeat until sated. And also, if you’re a steak fan then yes, his take on the ribeye, with a marvelous masala butter and fries, is going to work well for you.
While I have not tried it yet, Jay is also doing brunch on both Saturdays and Sundays, a nice alternative to the usual suspects. His menu includes Biscuits and Gravy with mushroom ragout, chili crisp, and fried eggs; an Uttapam with masala potatoes and slices of rosy prime rib; a gorgeous smashburger with masala aioli, pickles, aged cheddar, and fries; and something he calls The Full Story, a meal that goes on for days and includes a three-egg herb omelet, kimchi, daal, french fries, dosa, and your choice of bacon, sausage or avocado. If you feel the need to go out for sustenance only once on a weekend, it seems this should be it.
I am sorry I’ve not mentioned the cocktails yet. As you might expect of a restaurant in Brooklyn, they are carefully crafted from small batch everything, but they're also thoughtfully named for musicians and poets with quotes to inspire you while you sip. The Cohen (Dance Me to the End of Love) is a mix of mezcal, campari, cynar, meleti, and bitters, while the Walcott (poets love the poetry that kills them, as drowned sailors the sea) is a mix of coconut washed rye and rhubarb, and the Dove (If you can’t be free, be a mystery), is tequila based with lime and faccio brutta centerbe.
The restaurant is also quite lovely. Designed by Daria, it is intimate and warm, with tight bistro tables along a windowed wall banquettes, a long bar lined with tinctures and infusions that ends at the window to the open kitchen, and amber lighting from beautiful mid-century glass and brass fixtures that spills in soft pools on the quiet sidewalks of 7th Avenue.
Lore is a gem, one of those neighborhood places that’s impressive enough to draw folks from those other boroughs searching for the next chef to name drop, but that keeps its locals well-fed and warmly welcomed with simple joys like that perfect dosa a young boy learned in a hot kitchen, at the knee of his grandmother, across the world.
Lore is located at 441 7th Avenue in Park Slope, 347-599-0300
info@lorebroooklyn.com.
That’s sounds like a must try