Olmsted Was the Perfect Restaurant for a Different Time
When the restaurant Olmsted opened in Prospect Heights in 2016, it seemed designed to give a large contingent of Brooklyn diners of the time exactly what they wanted. Between them, partners Greg Baxtrom and Max Katzenberg had worked at spots like Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Alinea, Per Se, and the original incarnation of Torrisi. (A third partner, Ian Rothman, had been the horticulturist at Atera.) They brought all of that fine-dining experience to bear at a restaurant that was something like Stone Barns Lite, meshing locavore cooking and over-the-top hospitality into a package that was affordable and accessible enough for neighbors to drop in whenever they liked. The most expensive item on the opening menu was guinea hen, served two ways, for $24.
Jonathan Gold once observed that the “first responsibility of any great restaurant” — the tier of high-caliber, high-expense establishment to which the spots on the partners’ résumés belong — “is to keep you in the bubble, the soft-serve cocoon of illusion where you forget the world exists for anything but your pleasure.” Baxtrom and Katzenberg understood how to do that with a limited budget. I don’t remember if they even took reservations the first time I went. Walking in, my wife and I were told there’d be a wait for the table — and were then ushered into Olmsted’s manicured back garden for snacks and drinks among the greenery, next to the restaurant’s two pet quails. We were in the bubble; we were quick fans.
The food, often served on kaleidoscope-colored plates, always seemed similarly designed to make customers feel, above all else, delighted: There were carrot-orange crêpes blanketing warm clams. Crab rangoons filled with kale served in custom takeout boxes. Long strands of rutabaga treated like fettuccine Alfredo, showered with cheese and truffles. For dessert: lavender fro-yo.
Everything was Hamilton-grade earnest, and the whole endeavor could have been twee to a fault — in colder months, hot cocoa was served in mismatched mugs, including one featuring Baxtrom in a cape; “Super Dork” was written below — but Baxtrom and Katzenberg pulled it off because they nailed the detail that the more expensive places where they’d worked recognized: Customers should leave a meal feeling really good. For a time, the restaurant was the most wholesome party in town. Friends of mine, before they moved to Manhattan and had a kid, celebrated birthdays with dinner at the bar each year. Visiting parents probably made up 85 percent of Olmsted’s customer base.
In an Instagram post, Baxtrom wrote that his decision to close the restaurant later this month was based on a number of factors; it was sad but not surprising to hear that the place struggled. Rumors had been circulating that the restaurant had some trouble paying its bills, and to this outside observer, the place never quite found its groove after the pandemic. Part of that is due to diners’ changing tastes. Whimsy doesn’t sell like it used to. There has been a marked shift away from cheffed-up originality and back toward the familiar: Roasted chicken with French fries and a great platter of shrimp cocktail hold more cachet than guinea hen with ramp mousse and scallop skewers in corn husks (another Olmsted favorite, and, if memory serves, a clever cost-cutting strategy since Baxtrom was able to buy damaged scallops that his fish guy wouldn’t otherwise have sold). During COVID, Katzenberg left the restaurant group, which by then included a French restaurant across the street and further expanded to include a bakery–slash–pizza tavern down the street and a Rockefeller Center restaurant that itself felt a bit like Olmsted Lite at the outset (that restaurant, 5 Acres, is still open with a menu that’s now heavy on comfort food).
The last time I went to Olmsted was for Alinea’s pop-up this past spring. We’d been ushered out of Olmsted proper and into a separate restaurant across the street, commandeered for the month, for dessert. Grant Achatz came out, stern and solemn, to begin spooning and drizzling Alinea’s signature served-all-over-the-table dessert. Baxtrom was next to him, spooning and smiling. I’m sure he had a lot on his mind, but when he saw my wife and me, he just had one question: “Hey, guys! Are you having a good time?” Of course we were, we said. And we really meant it.
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