When you get married it doesn’t occur to you, at least it didn’t occur to me, you’re not just marrying your spouse but also your spouse’s family. Fortunately, I liked them and they seemed to like me. It’s typically a package deal. You may not see the in-laws often. But they tend to play a role in your calculations, especially around holiday time.
In similarly clueless fashion, I was unaware that when your daughter and son-in-law open a restaurant, as mine did Barker Cafeteria in Brooklyn last week, that, too, becomes a family affair. We’d visited the spot, in Bed-Stuy, during various phases of construction. And we also attended the “Friends and Family” soft opening a couple of weeks ago.
But it wasn’t until the restaurant went live a few days later — heralded by a column in the New York Times — that I realized things had changed. Obviously, the change was most profoundly felt by my daughter Gracie and son-in-law Henry who haven’t had time to come up for air. I still haven’t been back. But we’ve been receiving updates from friends and relatives that have.
My brother James and his girlfriend Louise visited last Friday. I suspect the “friends and family” tradition exists because that cohort tends to be supportive and more forgiving than the paying public, as the staff smooths out the wrinkles. But such assumptions don’t apply in the case of Jamie.
My daughter Lucy also visited, leaving her twins in their father’s care, and hung out at the counter sending photographs. The place looked busy but not too busy. “Are their lines outside?” Debbie, my wife, asked via text message. That may sound like hubris but my brother had reported lines the previous afternoon. “I was initially annoyed because when we arrived there was a line out the door,” Jamie explained, “and I was about to ‘go Jamie’ but Louise calmed me down.”
My brother can get downright unpleasant when things don’t go his way at restaurants. He’s not one of those monsters who is mean to waiters. He just stews silently at infractions as minor as having his can of Coke arrive lukewarm. So, satisfying my brother rather than say, turning a profit, could conceivably have been the first week’s steepest challenge.
“Was there actually a line?” I asked incredulously. Jamie has a dry sense of humor. I assumed he was joking. He wasn’t. “Yes, out the door and while we were standing on it, it got longer.”
I’m not sure how I’d describe Barker’s cuisine — perhaps charmed comfort food. The chalkboard menu features a stellar roast beef sandwich with horseradish, watercress and hickory sticks that’s currently lighting up Instagram; tartiflette (a potato gratin with bacon, onion and cheese;) and in a nod to Henry’s Canadian heritage, a crisp maple tart with vanilla bean infused whipped cream. All the baking is done in-house.
Gracie and Henry met while working as line cooks on the “hot line” at Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Westchester, frequently listed among the world’s best restaurants. They started a successful food company on Salt Spring Island off Vancouver in Canada during the pandemic, then returned to New York and got married in a simple City Hall ceremony. For the last couple of years Gracie has worked as a private chef and Henry at different restaurants, including at Superiority Burger on the Lower East Side.
But their respective talents seemed to demand that they run their own show sooner or later. Henry, who has also worked in top restaurants in Paris, had proven he knows how to manage a kitchen. Gracie’s talents, it turns out, include restaurant design. The simple interior — I call it cozy minimalism; Florence Fabricant in the Times compared it to an Agnes Martin painting — perfectly compliments the unpretentious food and reasonable prices.
Perhaps Gracie’s greatest accomplishment, thus far, has been amiably juggling requests from her mother for updates — about her stamina, the crowds, and whether they’re making money— while serving as the restaurant’s greeter and order taker. The staff also seems excellent but, due to Barker’s popularity, more will need to be hired.
I suggested, tongue only partially in cheek, that the restaurant install a closed circuit TV so that Gracie’s mother can monitor the place in real time without bothering her. Debbie loved the idea. When the couple lived on Salt Spring Island and she knew they were boarding the ferry she could watch them on the BC Ferries live feed. “I will give you our security camera log in,” Gracie responded, perhaps somewhat tentatively.
Looking back upon their successful first week in business my daughter confessed to feeling a certain amount of pride. “Waking up reflecting on the week,” she wrote to us, “my biggest feeling of achievement is that Jamie finished his whole meal and seemed to genuinely enjoy it.” Coca-Cola isn’t even on Barker’s menu but somehow Jamie’s arrived properly chilled. Gracie confided: “I got him a Coke before he got there.”
Ralph Gardner Junior is a journalist who divides his time between New York City and Columbia County. More of his work can be found in the Berkshire Eagle and on Substack.
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