A name like Buttermilk Channel instantly evokes certain images of Norman Rockwell-style homey comfort food, lovingly prepared and waiting on an embroidered floral tablecloth somewhere. While the restaurant in Brooklyn's Carroll Gardens certainly serves its own spin on American classics, the menu is decidely forward, with offerings such as warm rabbit rillettes and duck meatloaf. Vegetarians even get their own menu! 

Owner and native New Yorker Doug Crowell took a minute out of his busy schedule to talk to us about what keeps drawing the crowds to Buttermilk Channel, which opened its doors during the height of last fall's downward market spiral. 

But what we were really curious about, of course, was where a busy restauranter chooses to spend his spare time when he's not running between the kitchen and "the front of the house." Check out Doug's thoughts below on two of his favorite culinary-inspired getaways, as well as his local restaurants of choice. 

xo,

your jauntsetter team

PS - Doug also happens to be a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, which is based in Hyde Park, NY, our Trip Pick of the Week. As you can probably guess, the surrounding area has some truly excellent eats. Click here for blog post on our top tips for where to dine, including restaurants in nearby Red Hook and Rhinebeck.

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I was looking for something that would tie the name to the community, the area, and to the agricultural past of the area. Buttermilk Channel is the body of water, which is about seven blocks west of us, separating Brooklyn from Governor's Island. There are a few stories about how it got its name. Clearly it has something to do with the dairy farmers in this area 150 to 200 years ago, who were producing milk and transporting it across the channel. The current of the channel is really sort of choppy and one of the stories is that the currents would churn the milk so that by the time you get to the other side, you had butter instead of milk in your hands. Another story is about farmers walking their cows across the channel at low tide to Governor's Island. It's fortunate that we found this name. It's local and and it happens to be delicious sounding; buttermilk is one of those things that makes anything sound delicious. 

The most popular signature items on our menu are the chicken and waffles (that's buttermilk fried chicken with cheddar waffles); the duck meatloaf, which is sort of a funky take on a meatloaf served with a summer corn pudding right now; and we've got the lobster from the Lobster Pound in Red Hook. Ralph Gorham, who owns the Lobster Pound, goes and picks up those lobsters for me every Thursday and we get them on Friday, so they're 24 hours right out of the water. We're the only restaurant he sells to, so we're pretty excited about that. 

As for ingredients, we sort of look first to the neighborhood. We get a lot of things from Esposito's down the block; they make our sausages. The pastas and mozzarella are from Caputo's, and we're fortunate to have those things in the neighborhood. We also go to the local farmers markets, which is a really fun thing to do right now, wonderful things to be had there. We change our menu pretty frequently, small incremental changes happening every couple of weeks or so to allow us to incorporate all that. The best ingredients are found locally, so that's where our stuff comes from. 

I went to culinary school at the Culinary Institute of America. Before that I was cooking in restaurants in Boston where I went to college, and after that in restaurants in New York, where I made the transition to the front of the house - I felt more at home in the dining room. I worked for the B.R. Guest restaurant group and managed the Blue Water Grill in Union Square and Blue Fin in Times Square. So from there, what am I going to do? I opened my own place. So I found Ryan Angulo, our chef who was the chef at Stanton Social most recently and he was also looking to leave Manhattan and do something smaller and close to his heart. I found him on Craigslist and we put this together. 

 

We're very fortunate. We've had great business, we're in a great neighbhorhood and we're at a pricepoint I think that people can still afford. It's been fine so far. The market could have helped us, but it hasn't hurt us. Value in any economy is the way to go. It's a hard time to be an expensive restaurant. 

Brooklyn is a great place to have a restaurant like mine right now. It's a moderately priced neighborhood restaurant with good food, that takes food seriously. It's very difficult to have a restaurant like this in Manhattan right now - you're going to pay literally about ten times the rent I'm paying. We're getting more and more restaurants that are very serious, neighborhood-style places. There's wonderful food to be had in Brooklyn. 

Lately it hasn't happened that much, but I love to travel. All my trips tend to come from a dining perspective; I'm not going to a place where the food is not interesting to me. The last trip before we opened the restaurant was to Montreal (my wife went to college there; she's actually Canadian) and that was really phenomenal. We ate two days running at Au Pied de Cochon. That's honestly extraordinary and for anyone working in this industry and is interested in that sort of gastropuby, sort of Englishy, really wonderful small producers and great ingredients with really rustic food, that place is absolutely worth the trip to Montreal, if only to eat there. And it really requires like four nights and four people, the portions are insane. You can order something that looks like an appetizer, that's priced like an appetizer, but it's enormous. It's really just the coolest restaurant I've ever been to in the last nine years. Montreal as a food city is really tremendous. The governmentt supports the small farmers a lot more. So you're going to these farmers markets and there's beautiful stuff available, the cheeses in Quebec are really fantastic. It's a totally European feeling city.

Also surprisingly great food-wise was Israel. When I was opening up the first Max Brenner chocolate shop in Union Square, I was there for a month in Tel Aviv (it's an Israeli company), which was so amazing. That is a beautiful, beautiful city. I was suprirsed that the city was physically beautiful - the architecture has a Bauhaus feel to it, and the city is pretty green. The city itself is very safe and friendly; there's no part that I didn't feel unwelcome. And culinarily, it was just amazing. You have the European influences, the Middle Eastern influences, and people in general just have good taste. It's this self-sustaining country, with the climate of California, so your food is coming from just 20 miles away. I was not expecting to spend a month eating really well. 

A new place that blew me away is Locanda Verde in Tribeca. I've been there twice and I really think you're getting 3-star food at a 2-star price level. That's one of the benefits of a recession: you're eating food from a serious chef, food that is really not that far from my prices. The porchetta sandwich was fantastic, the tripe, the chicken for two, which sounds boring but was really wonderful. They have an amazing all-Italian wine list. 

Closer to my home in Fort Greene, I love Locanda Vini e Olii in Clinton Hill. That's definitely under the radar, and it's such a romantic little place. It's a restaurant that does really serious food in a really beautiful setting. Other places I like nearby, certainly James in Fort Greene and Good Fork over in Red Hook.