Tasting notes: Sailor

Is April Bloomfield and Gabe Stuhlman's new restaurant in Fort Greene worth it?

Sometimes waiting in line is a game of chicken. How early do you dare arrive to stake your claim? I confess to a certain sheepishness around restaurant queues. I’ll line up for a sample sale, a concert, a movie, but not food. You shouldn’t have to.

And so, in my feeble attempt to avoid the ordeal as long as I could, I found myself encircling Sailor—the hotly anticipated return of April Bloomfield (The Spotted Pig, The Breslin), who was blind to the abuses of friend Mario Batali and business partner Ken Friedman and failed to protect her staff—a FULL HOUR before the doors swung open, hoping no other desperate souls were there. But not a minute after I settled in with a cup of tea at the coffee shop on the other side of DeKalb did a man materialize just outside the restaurant. Standing tall and gabbing brazenly into his airpods, his confident stance unknowingly mocked my feeble attempt at nonchalance.