More details are out about Sevengrain Army, the sequel to chef Matthew Tilden’s beloved line-inducing bakery Scratchbread. In an Instagram post on Thursday afternoon, Tilden shared a video of him unlocking the door to an empty restaurant space. The building, which appears to have previously housed Williamsburg wine bar Denizen, is located at 88 Roebling Street, between North 6th and North 7th Streets.
“Hey Williamsburg, you gots a new neighbor,” Tilden wrote in the post.
Ever since Tilden confirmed his plans to open Sevengrain Army in February, the chef has been tight-lipped about the new project. In Eater’s last correspondence with Tilden in February, the chef declined to say when the restaurant planned to open, opting to reply with a zipper-mouth emoji instead. At the time, the chef clarified that the new project was “not a bakery” and would include a larger menu than the one offered at Scratchbread.
It’s not clear when the new restaurant will open its doors in Williamsburg, as the video posted to Instagram on Thursday appears to show an empty restaurant space. Eater has reached out to Tilden for information.
Ahead of the coronavirus pandemic, Tilden told Eater that he was “poised and ready” to open Sevengrain Army, but needed an additional $100,000 to get the new restaurant off the ground. At the time, he appeared to have even picked out a space for the new restaurant, which, notably, is different than the Roebling Street storefront he posted to Instagram this week.
In the seven months since that update, Tilden has been heading the bakery program at the newly opened High Low Beverage Company in Brooklyn, making Vietnamese-style pastries like miso scallion scones, a pandan and lime baked donut with sour cherry lime leaf jam, and a muffin baked in banana leaves.
It’s a significant change of course from his first project, the borough favorite Scratchbread bakery, which was best known for its pizza bread, sticky buns, and grits. Tilden first announced the bakery’s closure in October 2015, five years after it opened its doors in Bed-Stuy. In a newsletter formatted as a 42-line poem, Tilden said at the time that despite the bakery’s massive popularity, he had been struggling to get by behind the scenes.
“I was paying rent in focaccia when I began,” he wrote at the time. “Small business is a brutal, endless beating if you can’t get ahead. Just one investor would have changed everything. Now, I’ve got more debt than three lifetimes.”
Five years to the month after Scratchbread closed its doors, Tilden has confirmed the arrival of his new project. This story will be updated with new information.