2 days ago
Gertie Couple to Open New Restaurant in Longtime Buttermilk Channel Home
is an editor and reporter for the Northeast region at Eater, focusing primarily on New York City, where she was born and raised. She covers restaurants, bars, pop-ups, and the people powering them.
After closing their Williamsburg brunch spot, the couple behind Gertie announced over the weekend that they'll be relocating to Prospect Heights. It's one of two storefront takeovers they have up their sleeve, also scooping up the former longtime home of Buttermilk Channel in Carroll Gardens for a new concept. Both are aiming to launch by the end of the year.
First up: Gertie will relocate to 602 Vanderbilt Avenue, reformatted as a to-go spot. For the past 11 years, the address had been R&D Foods, a prepared food staple, which is shutting down on August 9. Owners Ilene Rosen and Sara Dima have passed the keys to Gertie co-owners Nate Adler and Rachel Jackson. Rosen and Dima aren't going far: They will continue with their next-door home goods store, R&D Goods, which shares a backyard with the food spot.
Gertie 2.0 on Vanderbilt will go all in on bagel production. 'We were baking and smoking stuff on premise, trying to be this juggernaut of Russ and Daughters and Katz's in one place,' says Adler. 'Seeing this resurgence of bagels, we are more New York-style than many of the newest additions to the scene.' They're working to add a hood ventilation to the kitchen so they can also fry latkes. And, they'll also carry on customer-favorite R&D Foods items in homage. By night, they'll host occasional pop-ups.
It's a more manageable, downsized layout from Williamsburg, convenient to Gertrude's, their Prospect Heights 'Jew-ish' bistro, which they opened with chef-partner Eli Sussman in 2023. These restaurants, and their newest, the forthcoming Trudie's Tavern, in Carroll Gardens — at 524 Court Street, where Buttermilk Channel stood for almost 20 years — will be a part of RAD, their hospitality group. (The Philadelphia outpost the couple had in the works is no longer.)
Trudie's Tavern will spotlight steak and rotisserie chicken in a kitchen led by Mike Cain, the last chef at Gertie in Williamsburg, who will also oversee the to-go iteration. They'll serve fried chicken-and-waffles, made with a matzo crust, in a nod to the Southern brunch spot once at this Brooklyn address.
