With Black Walnut, seasoned Carroll Gardens Chef Rob Newton dives into the hotel restaurant game, and blends his Southern roots with Asian influences

By Christine Siracusa

Downtown construction, as we all know, is off the charts, and the tens of thousand of residents filling City Point, 365 Bond Street, BKLYN AIR, et al., are bringing all manner of appetites with them. This is what, in part, prompted renowned Carroll Gardens chef and restaurateur Rob Newton to finally accept Hilton Hotel’s bid to bring him across the Atlantic. Atlantic Avenue, that is.

The chef/owner of Wilma Jean and Nightingale Nine, both on Smith Street, wasn’t particularly looking to get into the hotel game, but he was noticing a trend in the tight-knit community surrounding his culinary businesses. As the neighborhood’s brownstones were turning over, they were being converted back into single-family homes. This decrease in population density might have been music to the ears of the people who live there, but for restaurateurs and small business owners, it comes at a price. This sparked Newton to embrace the opportunity to tap into the growth underway on and around Schermerhorn Street.

That opportunity now has a name: Black Walnut. This recently opened restaurant encompasses an airy, open 102-seat dining room (a rare find in Brooklyn) as well as a spacious bar. If one’s not a fan of the typical, Brooklyn-baras-sardine-can experience, it’s a blessedly different spot to meet up for drinks after work.

Atmospherically, there’s no getting around the fact that Black Walnut is situated in the lobby of a hotel. The cloistered intimacy typical of so many of our most popular eateries, including Newton’s other two, is absent. Like the surrounding area, this feels a little more “city”—with a modicum of hustle and bustle that simply comes with the territory.

But even though located in a hotel, it shouldn’t be dismissed as a “hotel restaurant;” this approachable but upscale dining room is not counting on or catering to a captive audience. The menu is every bit as thoughtful and the dishes as nuanced as one would find at neighborhood gems like The Grocery or Al Di La, and the prices are utterly reasonable.

Chef Newton described his approach to the menu as a cross between his downhome Southern roots and a more recent immersion in Asian culture and cuisine. What he’s especially interested in right now is food with “lots of fresh herbs, some crunch, and a little heat, but not hot,” as he put it.

Newton explained that he’s moved away from cooking with butter in favor of cleaner oils. This Southern boy has come to feel that “butter is nice on bread, but it can also mask flavors.” True to his word, butter at Black Walnut gets a spotlight at the top of the meal, then retires to its dressing room for the rest of the act. Diners can expect the first thing out of the kitchen to be a soft, chewy dinner roll from Balthazar Bakery, accompanied by house-made cultured, whipped maple butter with salt and a light dusting of red pepper flakes.

The Arkansas native also pointed out that in designing this new fare, he pointedly challenged himself to restrain his “grits and mashed potato side” (which Newton explores fully at Wilma Jean) and look for a slightly more elevated twist to put on traditional dishes.

This philosophy is realized with exceptional clarity in the East Coast Fish Muddle. Fish muddle is a classic Southern dish, but Newton may be singlehandedly responsible for plucking it out of obscurity for anyone who grew up above the Mason Dixon Line. Black Walnut’s version consists of fresh shrimp, fluke, and clams in a splash of savory tomato-based broth. Dig a little deeper, and you’ll find delectable bits of house-cured pork highlighted by fresh chives and parsley. But what really sets this dish apart are the “potato chips,” as the menu so humbly refers to them. A traditional Southern muddle is served with rice or grits, or sometimes diced potato tossed into the broth at the end of the cooking process, but not here. Newton’s is served with crispy, fried, razor-thin slices of fingerling potato. Simply awesome.

Equally delicious, and a textural playground for the tongue, is the Grilled Shishitos starter. The perfectly charred peppers are accompanied by a mélange of crispy, fried artichokes, shaved raw fennel, and fried sunchokes, which are crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside. The plate is lined with a smattering of tangy mayo dressing, and the whole dish is sprinkled with an umami-rich topping referred to on the menu as “Black Dust.” This appetizer delivers on every aspect of the crispy-to-chewy spectrum, and is thoroughly interesting through the last bite.

Engaging diners in this way is high on the chef’s priority list because he’s seeing a trend toward “food as entertainment,” as he put it. The theory is that people spend so much time in individualized, virtual worlds that there’s an intense premium on real-world experiences, many of which focus on friends and food.

With any luck, the days of the generic restaurant at the hotel being a less-than-desirable dining option are significantly numbered, at least around these parts. Instead, we could be seeing more and more savvy travelers choosing what place they stay in because of which (or whose) restaurant lays claim to its lobby.

Amen to that.
Black Walnut
140 Schermerhorn Street / 929.337.1280 / blackwalnutbk.com