Pete Wells Gives Meaty Greenpoint Neighborhood Spot Cherry Point Two Stars

This past fall, former Beatrice Inn head chef Ed Szymanski took over as the executive chef at Greenpoint neighborhood bar and restaurant Cherry Point, adding a meat-focused menu that earns praise from the Times critic Pete Wells, who doles two stars upon the British restaurant.

Since it opened in 2016, Cherry Point has made its charcuterie plates on site, and it continues to do so under Szymanski, who has also ushered in a meaty menu with British inflections. Fittingly, in addition to Beatrice Inn and the Spotted Pig, Szymanski previously cooked at London barbecue restaurant Pitt Cue. On some standouts among those meaty offerings on the menu at Cherry Point, Wells writes:

On any given night, you can drop in and marvel at the fried lamb ribs, their apple glaze augmented by broken coriander and fennel seeds and raw curls of shallot. The quail will be butterflied, grilled over charcoal and served on toast, with pickled prunes above it and a reduction swirled with port below. The duck breast will be seared down until the skin is a thin brown sheet next to pink and juicy meat. This is served with roasted, puréed celery root and brûléed pears.

“The plates are marked by a refinement and moderation that is not always achieved by other chefs in the guts-and-fat school of cookery,” the critic goes on to write. Fish and vegetable dishes, though sparing, leave their mark, too. He calls the smoked whitefish salad “energetic.” On the dessert menu, Wells finds the obligatory sticky toffee pudding “surprisingly but not unpleasantly cakelike.”

And the wine list receives his praise, too, boasting interesting offerings like apple wine and mead. Overall, Wells asserts that the neighborhood spot has become much more than a bar with food. Two stars.

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