Restaurant review, Brooklyn Room, Manhattan Board.

I’m sorry, but you’re not on the list,” said the woman at the door, when I showed up (under the name “Mr. Pincus”) for my eagerly awaited, impossible-to-obtain 6:30 reservation at César Ramirez’s eighteen-seat tasting restaurant, Brooklyn Fare. Mr. Pincus’s reservation was for 9:30, I was told; they regretted the mix-up. Things had been hectic ever since the Michelin guide bestowed an unexpected two stars (“excellent cooking, worth a detour”) on the little Boerum Hill kitchen, thereby transforming it, more or less overnight, from a local cult favorite into one of the most talked-about restaurants in the city. Mr. Pincus was welcome to cool his heels for a few hours (“There’s a good bar around the corner”) or book at a later date. Since the next available date was in December, I wandered off for a drink. When I returned, woozily, at 9:35, people were lined up outside the door for the second seating. When we finally sat down, at a few minutes after ten, I asked the gentleman next to me about the wine list. “We’re in Brooklyn, dude,” he said brightly. “This place is BYOB.”

The Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare (as the operation is officially called) will be serving wine as soon as it gets its liquor license, but until then, this ragtag, neighborly arrangement seems to suit Ramirez and his partners just fine. Their restaurant, on a bleak, even brutal, section of Schermerhorn Street (across from the subway, just down from a large Park Fast lot), is a simple storefront kitchen, which is attached, two doors down, to a grocery store of the same name. The reservation line connects to a cell phone. Although the dishes change constantly, the menu is a spare, unadorned document, listing courses by single ingredients (e.g., cod, sea bream, lobster). Diners crowd around a stainless-steel bar and are served their meals on chaste black vinyl place mats, which look like they’ve been fished from the bargain bin at Ikea. The lighting is flat (as in a working kitchen), and the room is devoid of decoration, unless you count the thickets of copper saucepots over the stove.

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