Profile

Co-owner Nicholas Morgenstern, the tall, lanky guy who bounds gazellelike from one end of the restaurant to the other, running plates and monitoring the door, is a pastry chef with a long and varied background in some of New York’s fanciest fine-dining kitchens, from Daniel to Gilt. He’s not exactly the type you picture donning a tractor T-shirt and fetching your bowl of bacon-wrapped dates. But Morgenstern is abetted in this New Brooklyn Cuisine venture by consulting chef Ryan Skeen, late of Resto and another veteran of French technique and suave Manhattan kitchens. Skeen has become known for his full-fat, Southeast Asian–inflected approach to food, and his porky presence can be detected throughout the menu of sharable small plates.

Eschewing the typical appetizer-entrée progression, the General Greene divides its dishes into “Cold” and “Hot” categories, regardless of size. “Bar Plates,” like those maple-syrup-lacquered, bacon-wrapped dates, make a fine snack alongside one of the house specialty cocktails or a refreshing glass of sangria. Order a few and you’ve got a meal. Mini mason jars come filled with chicken-liver mousse or an inspired, rilletteslike mixture of preserved lamb and fermented black beans to spread on oil-drizzled toast; a radish duo—razor-thin black-radish slices blanketing a few of the breakfast variety—is vividly dressed with sea salt and chopped anchovy. There are deviled eggs, too, and candied nuts that your affable bartender stashes on some rustic shelving behind the bar.

On each of the U.G.’s visits, the streamlined menu had changed slightly, subtly conveying the NBC notion of seasonality and market sensitivity. So one night’s wax-bean salad might be supplanted, at the next meal, by a superb tangle of julienned summer squash and piquillo peppers slicked with a rich pistachio pesto. An unusual watermelon salad mingles dabs of fresh goat cheese and delicious coins of spice-rubbed lamb, and a quartet of roasted pork ribs is aggressively seasoned with salt and pepper and painted with squiggles of sweet-and-sour tomato chutney. You expect a good burger at a joint like this, and what you get is a perfectly proportioned six-ouncer with English Cheddar and a side of potato chips.

Of course, you wouldn’t want to skip dessert at a pastry chef’s restaurant. A confectionery perfectionist, Morgenstern has been tweaking nonstop, and what started as a superdense pot de crème has morphed into a lighter, looser (but equally delicious) chocolate-hazelnut pudding. There’s usually a fluffy vanilla-lemon cheesecake, more mousse than cake, with a tart tanginess derived from yogurt and a garnish of Greenmarket berries. The favorite dessert among the boisterous young crowd, though, might be the chocolate-chip cookies, judging by the steady parade of plates that stream out of the kitchen like ducks at a shooting gallery. They’re heavy on the chocolate, served warm from the oven, and like just about everything else at the General Greene, they handily exceed expectations. — Rob Patronite and Robin Raisfeld

Note

The wine and beer list is small, with a few local nods, and Nathan, the barkeep, takes his drinks very seriously. 6-11

Ideal Meal

Radishes with sea salt and anchovies, lamb-and-watermelon salad, grilled steak, bbq baked black beans, cookies.

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New York Magazine Reviews

• Robin Raisfeld and Rob Patronite's Full Review (8/11/08)

Featured In

• Cheap Eats 2008: The Cheap List (7/28/08)