Danny Brown has found a new home. The chef — best known for running the first Michelin-starred restaurant in Queens — is now heading up the kitchen at Estuary, a restaurant opening today at at 159 Bridge Park Drive near the Brooklyn Heights waterfront.
It’s part of the One°15 Brooklyn Marina, a project that also includes Ebb & Flow from James Beard award-winning chef François Payard, who is culinary director of both the restaurant and the bakery.
Estuary, which seats 150 people inside and 48 outside, is an American restaurant with mostly a standard menu of sandwiches, salads, and entrees such as grilled branzino, plus picks that seem geared toward a likely tourist crowd, like a hot dog and a lobster roll. A selection of savory tarts include a Japanese eggplant and plum tomato variety, or a scallop and leeks fondue one. A raw bar and an ice cream sundae station are also on deck. See the menus here.
It’s a return to slightly finer dining for Brown, who closed his last restaurant Charc in September 2018. He was last the chef at Circa Brewing Company in Downtown Brooklyn. But before that, he rose to the scene with his restaurant Danny Brown Wine Bar & Kitchen, which became the first restaurant in his native borough of Queens to receive a Michelin star.
The marina, meanwhile, is the first new one to open in New York in 50 years, run by a Singapore-based company. The restaurant on Pier 5, which has lots of white tablecloths and nautical colors and touches, is supposed to have a view of the lower Manhattan skyline.
Estuary is now open for dinner starting at 5:30 p.m., with brunch and lunch coming later.