Boutros Gives a Boost to Brooklyn's Little Syria

Boutros Gives a Boost to Brooklyn’s Little Syria

By Sarah Zorn

Positioned next to the seminal Sahadi’s and Damascus on Atlantic Avenue (also more recently occupied by Urban Market and Barney’s New York), Boutros is the ultimate meeting ground between old neighborhood and new.

A debut venture for Bay Ridge native Allen Dabagh, the wood, moss and metal-furbished restaurant fuses his Lebanese/Syrian heritage with a modernist aesthetic and technique (the chef previously worked under Jean-Georges Vongerichten).

So while you’ll find hummus on the menu, it essentially serves as sauce for a jumble of barely-cooked spring peas and slivers of seasonal green almond. Kale plays a starring role in the tabouleh, while bulgur wheat appears in another less traditional form—as the base of an especially toothsome fried rice, soaked with sesame oil and stippled with pebbles of spicy soujouk sausage.

In lieu of the flatbreads known as manousheh, legitimate wood-blistered pizzas comprise a dedicated section of the menu, capped with toppings like duck confit, Yukon potato and harissa. And entrees veer boldly away from Middle Eastern standards such as stews and shish kebab; think duck with coffee, freekeh and fava beans, pork chops paired with ramps, spring garlic and caramel, and even pudgy envelopes of ricotta agnolotti, bathed with dill emulsion, bubbles of roe, and flecks of hay-smoked trout.

Pastry chef Pietro Aletto takes similar liberties with sweets—chief amongst them the strawberry knafeh—composed from ricotta, pistachio and sheets of cinnamon ketaifi, and ornamented with strawberry sorbet and a tableside pour of consommé.