Cali Faulkner has been dying to open her own restaurant from the day she started culinary school. In fact, she purchased many of the plates you’ll see at her wonderful new neighborhood spot Third Falcon years ago, long before she found this space on Myrtle Avenue and tackled the more mundane tasks of being a business owner — like “sign a lease” and “deal with contractor” and “organize payroll.”
“This has been my dream for so long,” she tells Brooklyn Magazine, right before we tucked into a delicious meal here in Fort Greene. “I just love restaurants, and hospitality, and I love the idea of creating my own space for people to come together over food. I wanted to have my hands in everything, to create a special, unique experience for my guests.”
Faulkner grew up in Connecticut, today lives in Clinton Hill, and spent much of her career prior to Third Falcon cooking in big New York City kitchens like Crown Shy and Eleven Madison Park. But it was a two-year stint at the acclaimed Verjus in Paris that really focussed her passions.
“There’s no better place to eat in the world than France,” she says (I’d counter with “Brooklyn,” but whatever). “And in the north they have just a very simple and satisfying way of eating: fresh ingredients, lots of seafood, butter and dairy. I found that that’s a really nice canvas for me, to go back to the classics but also have a bit of fun. So that’s sort of what I’m going for at Third Falcon. I want the food to be familiar and comforting, but maybe you’re also trying something completely new.”
She nails it. Third Falcon features a tight, frequently-changing menu of hearty, interesting, big-flavored dishes that make full use of whatever looked best that morning at the greenmarket. Take the two most playfully-named dishes: On the night we went, the starter known as “Instead of Olives” was a bowl of green, black, and red grapes, either pickled or dehydrated, and dusted with a strikingly savory seasoning. This will possibly be different by the time you get there, as grape season in this part of the world is brief. No spoilers! Just order it and see what happens.
Pickled and dehydrated grapes, aka “Instead of Olives,” $8 (Photo by Scott Lynch)
And Faulkner’s “Greens of the Moment” salad was super punchy: sharp, mustardy, crunchy with sesame and buckwheat, the bitterness of greens evened out by an abundance of chewy dates and sweet tomatoes cooked in duck fat. Get this beauty with a sack of her exceptional, freshly-baked brioche and a cute little ceramic basket of imported butter, and you basically have a whole meal.
Seafood dominates most of the rest of the menu. The Montauk red shrimp, slathered in a gingery, messy kari-gosse, are sweet and plump and come with head (the best part) and shell intact, so you get to feel that instinctive animal pleasure of ripping it apart with your hands and gnawing through shrimp skull.
Montauk red shrimp “kari-gosse,” $21 (Photo by Scott Lynch)
Faulkner’s scallops were lovely, piled on a base of fresh, snappy corn kernels, and her chicken, one of only two meat dishes when we went (the other involved venison), comes bathed in crab butter and plopped atop some roasted red Jimmy Nardello peppers.
Chicken, peppers, and tomatoes in crab butter, $32 (Photo by Scott Lynch)
But the sleeper hit here may be the buckwheat porridge, a rustic bowl of warm and buttery grains thick with braised beans and charred leeks. It may not sound too sexy, but its pleasures hit deeply.
Buckwheat porridge with beans and leeks, $22 (Photo by Scott Lynch)
There are just a few desserts, and when one of them is sticky toffee pudding that I’ll be getting every time. Cocktails cost $16, and glasses of wine, as well as cider and beer, are about the same. Faulkner makes a “seasonal soda” as well, if you’re in the mood for something softer.
“I love this part of the city,” said Faulkner. “I really love all the small businesses around here, and wanted to make this community the place where I opened my first restaurant. It means the world to me that people are coming in and enjoying the food. It’s just really exciting to have a place of my own, where I can be creative, and share it with everyone.”
Buckwheat sticky toffee pudding, $14 (Photo by Scott Lynch)
Third Falcon is located at 360 Myrtle Avenue, at the corner of Adelphi Street, and is currently open on Wednesday through Sunday from 5 to 10 p.m.
The post Third Falcon brings the flavors of northern France to Fort Greene appeared first on Brooklyn Magazine.
