Where’s the Grease?

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 …