Angulo Ryan - Kindness & salt: recipes for the care and feeding of your friends and neighbors

WHEN YOURE OPENING A RESTAURANT, neighbors peer into your dusty construction site to ask what the place is going to be. Weve built two of them from the ground up, and each time we began without a clear answer to that question.

W hen we met, we were both working at huge, raucous Manhattan restaurants that kept us out until four in the morning. We wanted to come home to Brooklyn, to make the kind of small, friendly restaurant that serves the neighborhood it belongs to.

Brooklyn has the population of a big city (were bigger than Houston, and gaining on Chicago), but theres no mistaking it for that metropolis on the other side of the bridge. We have a few skyscrapers, but they dont define us. Instead, Brooklyn is a collection of neighborhoodsevery one of them a small, proud town.

We searched for a neighborhood that needed a bistro, or our idea of onea restaurant for all occasions. We envisioned a place where families with kids could share french fries at five oclock, and dates would begin with Champagne and oysters at eight. A spot you could drop by for an impromptu post-work burger and a beer at the bar with a friend, or reserve a table for six for the meet the parents dinner. We would host your blow-out birthday bashand then be there to nurse you back to life with French toast and bacon the next morning. The room would look great by candlelight or sunlight, and the menu would have something for everyone.

We fixated on a few details, microcosms of the world we wanted to build. For Buttermilk Channel, we envisioned big, fat beer mugs and trestle-leg farm tables. Before wed even thought of what the signature dishes should be or what to name the place, we knew we wanted to open a restaurant where you would sit with your feet up on that trestle, drinking a beer out of that mug. For French Louie, we imagined marble tabletops, satiny brass, and long banquettes, the kind that make it easy to come around and slide in next to your date. We filled in the rest of the landscape to match these details.

While we wound up with two different restaurants, each with their own style, their spirits are the samebecause the two most important things they sell arent on the menu. Lawyers advertise leases and lawsuits, but they really sell peace of mind. A nail salon really sells foot rubs. A bar sells booze, but youre there for the conversation, a game on TV, a jukebox packed with music you remember. Our menus offer food and drink. But what we really sell is kindness and salt.

Lets start with salt. Our food is pretty straightforward; bistro cuisine is, after all, based in the traditions of home cooking. Were not cutting-edge; you wont have to google the ingredients on your plate. Instead, youll find uncomplicated food, made carefully with classic technique. The best fried chicken () is made by marinating a good bird overnight in buttermilk, flouring it an hour in advance to let the crust form, and frying it twice. There may be a new and improved method, something involving meat glue or sous vide, but thats not our style.

Whenever a customer asks us how we get simple fooda roast chicken, a piece of fish, a green beanto taste so much better than it does at home, the answer is usually salt.

Paying attention to seasoning means cooking carefully, with an eye to bringing out the best in good ingredients. Theres the right salt for each dish and the right amount, and you cant just sprinkle it on at the end (see ) that seasons them from the outside in. No plateeven at dessertleaves the kitchen without a final sprinkle.

Salt we buy; kindness answers a help-wanted ad and comes in for an interview. With a little time and tasting, we can teach someone about wine and food; with practice, anyone can learn how to make a killer Negroni or grill a steak. But we cant turn someone into the type of person who will run to the bodega for SweetN Low during a busy service because its what your dad likes in his coffee.