Ken Addington’s Newest Restaurant Serves Global ‘Pub-Style’ Fare in a Spacious Backyard

Ken Addington — who rose to prominence as the chef at Greenpoint hit Five Leaves — has opened an eccentric, 90-seat backyard restaurant in Williamsburg, at 302 Metropolitan Avenue, near Roebling Street.

Strangeways serves “pub-style” fare, according to a spokesperson for the restaurant, though much of the menu appears to borrow from cultures that Addington says he learned about during his tenure as a New York City chef and while traveling abroad. Pork cheek vindaloo is served over creamy rice grits with cucumber yogurt, while the restaurant’s katsu sandwich is made with fried monkfish, rather than chicken or pork cutlet. Dishes more commonly seen at Williamsburg brunch spots are also on deck, including fish and chips, spaghetti with clams, a backyard burger, and half roast chickens.

The new backyard restaurant also joins the growing list of businesses that have opened their doors for weekend brunch service. Sourdough cinnamon toast, a cheesy scrambled egg sandwich, and a merguez scramble with avocado zhoug appear on the restaurant’s brunch menu, available Saturdays and Sundays starting at 10 a.m.

Clockwise: sourdough cinnamon toast, a monkfish katsu sandwich, spaghetti with clams, and hot smoked salmon kedgeree

For its cocktail program, Strangeways has brought on a few of the city’s greats, including Shannon Tebay of the East Village’s wildly popular cocktail bar Death and Co and Nate Lithgow of the recently shuttered barbecue restaurant Holy Ground. Expect a mix of frozen and mixed cocktails, adapted for outdoor drinking with bright ingredients like sparkling wine, grapefruit, mint, aloe, lime, and green chiles. Non-alcoholic cocktails, including one made with celery, ginger, and coconut round out the drinks menu.

Strangeways is the latest from Addington, a noted New York City chef behind the recently opened Soho Diner, which was received with mixed reviews, and Greenpoint’s popular Five Leaves restaurant. Here he’s teamed up with Australian restaurateur Jamie Webb, who he previously worked with at Eight Mile Creek in Soho. The new restaurant is open for outdoor dining on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m., Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 12 a.m. and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m.