Michelin-Starred Chef Behind Faro Tackles Sichuan Food in Next Act

The Michelin-starred chef behind Bushwick Italian restaurant Faro is opening a wildly different restaurant for his next project — a casual Sichuan Chinese restaurant called General Debs.

It might sound like an unusual move for chef Kevin Adey, who is not Chinese and has made his name in seasonal new American food, but the Bushwick resident says he happens to love Sichuan cuisine and simply can’t find it in the neighborhood.

“I know that you can go to different parts of the city and get extremely authentic, amazingly tasting, great Sichuan dishes,” Adey says. “But they’re just not around here. I’m trying to bring a little of that to Bushwick.”

General Debs, named after Adey’s wife Deb, will be going into the former Cafe Ghia space at 24 Irving Avenue, at the corner of Jefferson Street. The focus will be on boiled noodles like zhajiangmian, a thick noodle accompanied by a soybean paste-based sauce and ground pork, and dan dan mian, a noodle that comes with chili oil. About seven noodles total will be offered. A variety of dumplings and Sichuan classics will also be on the menu, such as mapo tofu, twice cooked pork, and wontons in red chili oil.

The Cafe Ghia space will soon be replaced by a Sichuan restaurant from Kevin Adey.

Adey has been cooking Sichuan food at home for about a decade, experimenting with recipes and trying to recreate dishes that he enjoys. It’s the type of food with bold flavors that he prefers to eat when he’s not working, he says. The new restaurant grew out of the frustration that Bushwick didn’t have a place that he could go.

General Deb’s will be a far more casual restaurant than his first restaurant Faro, which opened in 2015 and eventually earned a Michelin star. Check averages, too, should be lower, with nothing costing more than $20. Brunch may also be added in the future as well.

Ambitious and more traditional Chinese restaurants have been slow to open in North Brooklyn, which is mostly packed with corner take-out spots. The recent opening of Sichuan restaurant Birds of a Feather from the Michelin-starred Cafe China team was particularly welcome to Williamsburg for that reason. “I just want to show the food the respect it deserves,” Adey says. He expects to open the restaurant in June.