I’m dreaming that I just had goat cheese in Ocean Hill, the nutritionally deprived Brooklyn neighborhood where I grew up — and where “cheese” today usually means the bright-orange mutation wrapped in cellophane.
But it’s the real deal at MacDonough Café (83 Saratoga Ave.; 347-221-0295), a sunny, corner spot launched in 2015 by Nadia and Benoit Busseuil, a couple who bought the long-vacant, four-story building, where they also live, in 2012.
Although new investment and new residents have revitalized much of Bedford-Stuyvesant, they’ve come more slowly to Ocean Hill — a low-rise neighborhood that lies at Bed-Stuy’s eastern tip and was ravaged by arson and riots in the 1970s. Despite a recent rebound, it remains a food wasteland.
Amid a sea of greasy Chinese and Caribbean takeout and grungy bodegas, MacDonough Café popped up like a miracle — a simple, L-shaped room of raw brick and wood, with a long counter and light streaming in from two sides. It boasts healthier and tastier food than the district’s hardworking African-American and Caribbean-American families might otherwise be able to easily find — like organic bread, fresh greens, antibiotic-free ham and GMO-free oatmeal.
And, tables and chairs. As recently as 2009, I found not a single food spot in Ocean Hill with places to sit.
“There were a lot of fast-food options here that weren’t the best for anyone’s health,” says Nadia, 37, a former senior manager for Accenture Consulting. “So we buy anything we can that’s organic, made without GMOs. We deal with fresh ingredients made from scratch and no meat from animals given antibiotics.”
She uses whole-wheat and sourdough bread from local baker Old Poland, organic Harney & Sons tea and La Colombe fair-trade coffee. The house brew, Elise’s Coffee, is named for her and her husband’s adorable daughter, age 3, who delighted customers Saturday afternoon as she pranced from table to table.
Nadia says her customers are a mix of “new people moving in and others who’ve lived here for 20 or 30 years. I keep our prices reasonable because we don’t want people to think we’re just for those who just got here.”
The short menu’s inviting and remarkably cheap. A wonderful grilled cheese sandwich of mozzarella, American and goat cheeses pressed between multigrain toast was an impossibly low $4.50. A $6.50 veggie wrap actually tasted of beets, sweet potatoes and roasted tomatoes inside a flour tortilla.
Nadia knows not to push things too far. “We want to add a little twist, but not too much,” she says. In Ocean Hill, a little twist is a smart step down the right road.