Wedged into a brownstone basement on a middlebrow stretch of Brooklyn Heights (Starbucks on one side, Tango on another), Montague Diner is a neo-diner that doesn’t want to be a diner at all, a latter-day luncheonette that looks askance at luncheon meat. True, the open hours (7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m.) command some respect in a city of increasingly early bedtimes, and the free bowl of potato chips at the start of each meal is a nice touch. The burger is decent. But my tuna melt came with a stiff slab of fridge-cold American cheese, an unpardonable sin in the dinerverse. The steak in the steak and eggs was tender one bite, ropey the next. Across all dishes, the kitchen used a wimpy hand with acid. Overdressed and underbaked at the same time, the place, which replaces neighborhood fixture Happy Days Diner, seems caught between two worlds: It has neither the hugging comfort of a true diner nor the low-lit fizz of a wine-on-the-table restaurant. There’s too much curation and not enough excess, too much fussing and paring down and none of the true spirit of the diner, which is the spirit of the refill, the twenty-page spiral-bound menu, “eggs any way you like,” and the triple-decker sandwich.
Then there’s the matter of cost. The owners—a group of movie people, a recent article in New York mag tells us—wanted to “pull inspiration” (how naughty) from the “look and feel of Great Depression coffee shops and restaurants.” I missed the Great Depression by a few decades, so I can’t really comment on the historical authenticity of the décor (soft lighting, vintage glassware, green-band bistro plates, bathrooms that look like phone booths). But I’m not sure the “pile of fries + bottle of champagne” offered on the menu for $99 are quite vibing with the memory of the bread line. The New Deal was generous, but not “$80 for a grilled cheese and a bottle of chilled red” generous.