With crudités, you take a vegetable, let’s say it’s a carrot, and you dip it into whatever dip it comes with. The genius of this dish, a cheeky take on crudités, is that it’s about ten times better than what you usually get out of a bowl or a plate of raw veggies. The wordplay, the knife skills, the vegetable focus - all display Fuller’s previous work in kitchens like Per Se, Momofuku Ko, and Nix. Of the nine dishes on the dinner menu, veggie “nachos” might be the most emblematic. All we can say about that is haute cuisine’s loss is the café world’s gain. Still, when asked, the chef will cheerfully admit that although she appreciates the theater of the format, she’s never had a fine-dining meal she’s actually liked. You wouldn’t know it by looking at the comfort-food menu chirpily handwritten in five or six different shades of ink, but Fuller has as impressive a fine-dining résumé as any you’re likely to come across. There’s yellow wallpaper with a cherry-blossom motif on one side and a forest-themed tapestry on the other, and a mix of soul, rhythm and blues, and classic rock playing at a volume loud enough to induce a sigh of nostalgia but low enough not to drown out conversation. It does have its chef-owner’s charm and drive and a small staff that radiates warmth throughout the wide, shallow dining room, which is furnished simply with a bar, a slatted-wood banquette, and a row of metal stools lining a ledge where curtained windows look out onto Court Street. The restaurant has no “concept” (as Fuller’s husband, a food and beverage consultant, keeps pointing out to her), no “visual identity,” no logo, only the most discreet of exterior signage, and, at press time, no website. But it’s such an anomaly in the category it doesn’t even call itself one. daily, Madcap is as all-day as cafés come. Considering that its doors are open from 8 a.m. It is in this refreshing and somewhat antiquated spirit that Heather Fuller opened Madcap Cafe several weeks ago on a Carroll Gardens corner that loudly and somewhat confusingly advertises in one great cluster the presence of every adjoining business (a Pilates studio, a gym, a dentist’s office, a real-estate agency, the Scotto funeral home) in addition to her own. Customers tended to become very attached to these places of business and the people who worked there and use them as their home away from home, rather than today’s office away from office. These places were known to serve coffee in the morning, alcohol later on, and food whenever thirst or appetite demanded, but they didn’t make a production out of it. ![]() There was a time, not so long ago, before the “all-day café” and its carefully honed, millennial-friendly brand identity dwarfed the dining scene, when establishments like coffee shops, luncheonettes, and diners dotted the land. The closure “doesn’t mean we will fade out easily,” Fuller tells Grub.Madcap Cafe’s veggie “nachos” are essentially crudités, but about ten times better and more efficient. It’s a sad state of affairs, but even Fuller hopes her regulars and other supports won’t despair. ![]() Right away, locals and our own Underground Gourmet were taken with Fuller’s laid back, but secretly ambitious dishes, including, “veggie nachos,” essentially snappy crudités drizzled with green goddess dressing and topped with pico de gallo pork-and-chive dumplings on par with those in Chinatown sticky cinnamon buns baked fresh each day coconut-turmeric chicken sandwiches wrapped in pillowy flatbread, and all of it for under $14. ![]() But circumstances being what they are and the season and all that goes into running a nutso business like a restaurant has led me to decide we have done all we can and the well is dry.”įuller earned her stripes in the kitchens of Per Se, Nix, and Momofuku Ko before striking out on her own with an all-day café on a bucolic stretch of Court Street. In a statement to Grub, chef-owner Heather Fuller says, “It has been a year of wonderful triumphs and craziness. One part of the stellar spread at Madcap Café.Ī little more than a year after introducing the city to a mindblowingly wonderful take on the classic bacon, egg, and cheese, plus other delights, Carroll Gardens’ Madcap Café has closed.
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