The Great Gertie is Reborn in Prospect Heights

By Scott Lynch

Gertie is located at 602 Vanderbilt Avenue, between St Marks Avenue and Prospect Place, and is currently open Wednesday through Monday, from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Rarely are we hit with an “Oh, no…oh, cool!” punch as potent as the one we got last summer, when Ilene Rosen and Sara Dima announced that while it was sadly true they’d be closing their beloved R&D Foods on Vanderbilt Avenue after eleven years of making sandwiches and such for their friends and neighbors, they’d also handed the keys over to Nate Adler of nearby Gertrude’s, who would be resurrecting Gertie, his great “Jew-ish” bagel and appetizer shop that recently shuttered, in the space—a big lose-win moment for this part of Brooklyn.

(Photo by Scott Lynch)

And now, just a few months and a total kitchen rebuild later, Gertie 2.0 is open, and it’s everything we dreamed it would be. Adler is keeping the menu tight and the hours to daylight (8:00 a.m to 4:00 p.m., no dinner service now or ever), but, oh man, are there plenty of breakfast/brunch/lunch bangers here.

Tuna melt latkes, $9; latkes with apple butter and sour cream, $9 (Photo by Scott Lynch)

The place to start your order is at the “Latke Bar.” Seriously, these puck-sized beauties—so crisp outside, so fluffy within—come in packs of three and, even just on their own, rank among the very best in town. But then Adler ups the ante here with a half dozen different options for toppings, including a “reuben-style” pickled herring and mustard, and, our choices on opening day, an apple butter and sour cream combo (sweet, salty, tangy, delicious) and an incredible tuna melt trio, the latkes laden with tuna salad, gooey American, and pickles.

“I really want to bring the idea of the latke bar to the masses,” Adler told Brooklyn Magazine. “That would be my ultimate goal. My dream would be to have a latke bar at Citi Field. I’m a huge Mets fan because of my grandmother Gertie, who was born and raised in Queens and brought me to games.”

Egg and cheese with pastrami on an everything bagel, $20 (Photo by Scott Lynch)

Hot and cold smoked salmon on an onion bialy, $16 (Photo by Scott Lynch)

The restaurant’s namesake was a Queens kid, but Nate grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and, like any self-respecting family up there during the 1990s and early aughts, the Adlers spent their weekends eating Absolute Bagels (RIP), that paragon of hand-rolled, kettle-boiled excellence.

“The goal at Gertie is to have the best New York-style bagels,” said Adler. “So we model our recipe on Absolute. No offense to the artisanal Apollos of the world, but ours are more old school: doughier, bigger, and a bit more rustic.”

You can get Gertie’s bagels in bulk, or with a schmear and some very good smoked fish, or, if you’re looking for a hangover-easing delivery system, as an egg-and-cheese sandwich topped with pickled peppers, hot sauce, and—optional, but highly recommended—a mess of smoked-on-site pastrami.

Smoked turkey club, $18 (Photo by Scott Lynch)

There are at least ten other sandwiches available as well. The smoked turkey club with bacon is served on rye and given a welcome bit of peppiness by a giardiniera schmear. R&D’s legendary kale salad makes an appearance, packed into a challah roll. There’s a tuna melt, a mustardy chicken salad topped with potato chips, a whitefish salad on an everything bagel, and an increasingly rare bialy sandwich, bursting with two kinds of smoked salmon and dill and caper schmear.

Matzoh ball soup, $10 (Photo by Scott Lynch)

Gertie’s matzoh ball soup makes a perfect companion to any of the above, but the sleeper hit here might just be the kasha varnishkes, a huge bowl of buckwheat groats tossed with brussels sprouts, mushrooms, and a tart-and-tangy lemon tahini dressing. Sweet treats include cookies by local hero Amy Hess, apple cake, and a chocolate babka that Adler seems very proud of. “Gertie reflects my upbringing as a New Yorker,” said Adler. “Sure, you can call it Jewish. Absolutely. But it’s really New York food.”

(Photo by Scott Lynch)

And unlike every other bagel shop I can think of in the city, there’s booze at Gertie, which you can add to any of the housemade sodas, a Dr. Brown-esque array of flavors like cel-ray, black cherry, and ginger. Or pour some bourbon in your chocolate egg cream. Or perhaps you’d enjoy a Gertie borscht Bloody Mary? Everything is served in to-go cups, too, which’ll be especially fun next summer during Open Streets. Day drinking has rarely sounded so alluring.

In the meantime, however, you can grab one of the half dozen or so stools up front and gaze out onto Vanderbilt while you eat or, even better–if it’s not ridiculously cold—sit out back in the spacious, heated patio.