Sailor
The perfect restaurant to discuss your divorce
228 Dekalb Ave. | Clinton Hill, Brooklyn
Sailor is the perfect restaurant to discuss your divorce with your wife. She had told me this was happening a few weeks earlier, and after the shock and the mess and the tears, I had to accept that not only was this inevitable but that it was for the best. We started telling people it was amicable. We kept our date night on the books.
Fort Greene is an ideal canvas for restaurants, what with its proximity to a hilly park, a weekend farmers’ market, and the area’s love of al fresco setups. There are seemingly solid families moving through their routines. I wanted to walk there, but it was pouring.
My wife was fighting a cold so she ordered a hot tea, claiming it was the first time she’d ever done that to start a meal. I got a martini. We’d felt far apart for years, but now I could see it for the fracture that it was.
We didn’t spend much time discussing the menu. Everything flowed naturally out from how we felt in the moment, both unwilling to endure friction over something as meaningless as dinner. Caesar salad? Sure. I didn’t even bother asking about the chicken liver toast or fried headcheese. I knew what her answer was. I’ll save those for another time.
Sunchokes with escarole and goat cheese arrived in a pile to be picked apart and pecked at. With a sharp dressing and crunchy pops of pine nuts, it was earthy and satisfying, the escarole in large, uncut sheets to slice apart and fool you into thinking there was more going on there than there was. We chipped away at the mountain of tasks in front of us, talking about furniture and lawyers and apartments, without really getting into anything. It seemed like everything was behind us and ahead at the same time.
A stuffed radicchio in red wine sauce was an intimidating shade of brown, cosplaying as a sticky toffee pudding. I thought about Is It Cake? and wondered if our 6-year-old had convinced the babysitter to turn it on. The profound meatiness of the sauce echoed; the rice stuffed inside had the comforting touch of whatever your mom served you on a tray when you were home sick from school.
April Bloomfield is the chef at Sailor, a restaurant that she opened following her own upheaval. After a prodigious start to her career, Bloomfield was embroiled in the scandal around her one-time business partner, Ken Friedman, whose restaurants became public symbols of sexual harassment and workplace misconduct; she later acknowledged she had not done enough. I don’t know how to weigh that against a life’s worth of work. I don’t know what to do with someone else’s wrongs other than to try to recognize them in myself.
A beautiful pork chop shows up at the table, with prunes and shallots and a mustard sauce. I’m sure Bloomfield did a lot wrong, but I still want to eat this.
The maritime charm of the dining room is more suggestion than theme. There’s plenty of artifice but it all melts away into a warm, well-executed whole. A table of displayed desserts lingers behind you at all times in the main dining room, a pleasant harbinger of things to come. Promise. Looking past them, you can see right into the kitchen, brightly lit and hustling.
There was a time when Sailor was nearly impossible to get into, but then they expanded and now it’s less of a chore. Things with my wife were so complicated at times, and then at some point they just weren’t. After nine years of marriage, some things slide away into new normals that you convince yourself are fine, better even. I watched her sip her tea and wondered how much of this I’d miss. The sweet moments of sharing meals made up for the thrumming anxiety of having to mind my every word, of being her punching bag, of fearing I’d get snapped at for asking a question about a financial decision. I finally admitted I wouldn’t miss those things. We ate steaming white folds of cod and she nodded, maybe hearing me, maybe still avoiding that. We talked about the savory green chickpea ragout under the fish. I ran through the same refrain I’d owned for years, admitting my faults, apologizing for my worst instincts, vowing to improve—I have no clue whether she understood that I could only tackle half of the issues.
The food at Sailor is not aiming at revelation. It feels like it’s trying to survive beautifully. Impress you, yes, but without any need to push you. You get the sense that Bloomfield is just happy to have another chance to show you how good she is at cooking.
Our server chatted with us about the drama with René Redzepi at Noma as she brought us a boat key to trade for our leftovers at the front. We’d had the chewy ginger cake before so tonight we ordered the brown sugar custard tart with crème fraîche. It arrived in a sharp-edged slice with punches of salt. The crème fraîche was a clear, clean note, and every bite was rich and simple. We had thousands more things to say, but for now some quiet felt best.
Images:
Cod with green chickpea ragout + harissa
Roasted sunchokes with escarole + goat cheese
Pork chop with prunes, shallots + mustard sauce
Brown sugar custard tart with crème fraîche
Outside