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Gabriel Nussbaum fills a diner niche for diner people

I met with Gabriel Nussbaum in one of the bright red booths at Montague Diner in Brooklyn Heights. At 10 a.m., every seat was filled with people sipping coffee and eating breakfast. You almost wouldn’t know that this place just opened in March of this year, and, unless you did your homework, you probably wouldn’t know that almost no one behind it had any restaurant experience — until now. In a relatively spontaneous pivot from film to food, Nussbaum and his oldest childhood friends came together to fill a vital neighborhood niche, and they’ve had fun doing it. 

Tell me about yourself and how you came to found Montague Diner. 

I opened the diner with a handful of friends who I’ve known forever. All of us live in the area now and grew up in the city going to diners. When you say to someone, “I’m opening a diner,” most people will say, “Oh, I’m such a diner person.” Because everybody is a diner person. It’s a funny self-identifier because people don’t say, “I love restaurants,” because, of course, they dislike certain restaurants. We identify ourselves as diner people. Having moved to Brooklyn Heights, we could feel that there was a bit of a lack of what we wanted this to be, which was a place where you might show up for breakfast and then show up for a drink after dinner. That’s a type of diner that has existed in New York City, but it’s a dying breed. Other cities might have more of the 24-hour thing, where there’s a sense that you could go and have a good time at night. 

There were a few places that I grew up going to that were touchstones for this, like Florent in the Meatpacking District. They were super alive at 9:00 in the morning and super alive at 3:00 in the morning. That’s our ambition. We’re going to try to go 24 hours, and we just got our liquor license, so we’re doing a full cocktail program, which is what I think drives it in the middle of the night. 

I walked past what had been Happy Days Diner (which closed during the pandemic) and saw the broker’s card in the window, but it hadn’t been listed anywhere online yet. I texted my wife and called my friends and was like, “Should we open a diner?” Everybody said yes right away. None of my partners and I have a restaurant background. We all work in film or TV. That probably gave us the energy and stupidity to try opening a diner. It rolled very quickly from there. We brought on operator-partners, Halley Chambers and Kip Greene, who have a restaurant in Fort Greene. We brought on a friend of ours who’s a production designer. And here we are. 

There are a lot of people involved in Montague Diner. Are there too many cooks in the kitchen?

We have all these chaotic text threads and email chains. The core group is five friends, myself included. All of us being quite ignorant doesn’t stop us from having a million opinions and being really annoying. However, what’s helped is that we’ve been really aligned in our vision. The type of food, ambiance and direction was clear. That solidified more as the look of the space came together. This isn’t a chrome 1950’s diner. It’s not a Greek diner with a fifty-page menu. There’s a lot of things that we knew it was not. We weren’t looking to recreate diner cuisine. We’re not doing sardine pancakes. We’re just doing really good pancakes. The ambition was to have the best of what a great diner would be expected to have — no gross surprises. A few fun surprises — the giant grilled cheese is really big — in keeping with the spirit of what we wanted to achieve. 

What are the connections between film and food?

The process of getting this place open and the creative crush of that, with everyone putting in overnight hours and trying to solve things for as little money as possible, felt very familiar. No matter how much money you raise, you can burn it by decorating or rebuilding a space. The question is, how do you source chairs and appropriate stools? How do you refinish a countertop? This is all like a movie. Time crunch and money crunch and fun problem solving. That was our comfort zone, in a funny way. 

What I’m not used to is that it then continues. All of us have to pinch ourselves and remind ourselves that these aren’t actors, they’re real people having breakfast. We weren’t creating this environment so that Robert De Niro could have a cup of coffee at the counter and say, “That was good, we’ll do another shoot tomorrow!” It’s continuous. Maybe it’s more like a Broadway production. You’re only as good as your last service. You can’t rest on your opening night performance. It’s not like a movie or TV. By the time people see it, you’re way done. This is a continual improvement process. 

How do you prioritize aesthetics without compromising on food?

Food comes first. Happy Days had a really strong look. It was very extreme. It had a blue floor and mismatched blue booths. It was crazy and loveable. We hoped to keep a bunch of that stuff. We kept the layout, but once you start lifting up booths that have been there for twenty years, it was clear that they were disintegrating. We ended up doing more rebuilding than we thought we would. It’s a funny trap. If you make a place look too eye-catching, suddenly it’s a restaurant and an experience, and if it has leopard print walls and velvet booths, you’re sending a message, and people are critical and discerning about the food. I would say that our food holds up against any diner in the city, but I would love for people to come in and think about the experience they had with their friend and not think about the food because it’s filling their fantasy of diner food. 50% of people might notice that these are really great pancakes. Other people might have the diner experience, which is the reason people say, “I’m a diner person.” It’s not really the food but the mood. 

If people have come in for breakfast, I would encourage them to see what it’s like at dinner, and vice versa. We’ve got two restaurants for the price of one. It’s a different mood at night, which has been really fun to watch people experience it in a totally different way. 

Do you have a favorite design element of the space?

One of the four top-booths has a pink tabletop. That’s the one where I like to sit. 

Is there a particular school that’s using Montague Diner as a hangout?

Totally. We’re very close to St. Ann’s, so the lunch rush on some days, when the older kids get to leave school for lunch, is huge. We get crammed booths full of high school and junior high school kids. They come from St. Ann’s, Packer, Brooklyn Friends and other places, too. We just started an after-school special where you can get cheese fries or a grilled cheese sandwich for five bucks, if you’re a kid. We get a fun kid explosion in the middle of the day, and then we see a lot of their parents in the evening. 

Would you say it’s mostly people from the neighborhood eating here, or are they coming from elsewhere?

As people have learned about us, we’re getting people who are venturing all the way from Manhattan. There was a nice piece on CBS about the diner a few weeks ago which brought a round of interest. That was national, so one hopes that people in other places are writing us down on their list of places to go in New York. It is mostly locals. There are places to eat in Brooklyn Heights, but this didn’t quite exist. 

We offered house accounts, which could have been a folly. Nobody could have signed up, but I had a feeling that they would because I’m the kind of person who would sign up. It’s fun. It makes you feel like you’re part of a community and it allows kids to charge their parents. People do respond to that, which is an indication that we have a local following. 

The menu has a combination of more highbrow options like chilled red and orange wines and burrata with pink peppercorns, and more diner classics like omelets and burgers. How has this been received and have you seen any ordering patterns emerge? 

We’re seeing both. Because of the neighborhood and who we’re serving and what year it is, not everyone wants to be eating heavy diner food all the time. This means that our grain bowl — which is more of a plate — is delicious and healthy. You can come here and eat pretty healthily. 

Our wine selection is really thought-through, and it compliments the type of food we’re serving really well. Kip, who designed the beverage program, did a great job with it. Now, we have this whole cocktail program rolled out. The cocktails are not sweet, cruise ship cocktails. They compliment the food quite well, too. A burger and martini is equally good as a burger and a beer. 

Now that you’re settling into the neighborhood, have you gotten a chance to think about what’s next for the Montague Diner group?

The focus remains on this place for now and finding more ways to involve ourselves in the neighborhood. We’ve already been doing these funny puzzle nights. Our friend, Wyna, was one of the creators of Connections, the New York Times game. We’d like to be doing more things like that. We’d love to do author nights or get involved with these cool concerts in the neighborhood at different churches. We’re looking to form relationships just to interconnect cultural hubs in the neighborhood and bring people together more.