GOWANUS — This restaurant menu doesn't hop around the truth.
Freek's Mill, which opened April 8 at 285 Nevins St., has a $15 starter called "Rabbit in a Jar." The direct description is for the French dish rillettes — rabbit meat cooked slowly in duck fat until it becomes spreadable paste.
Co-owner Jonathan Stewart said the tongue-in-cheek language captures the mood he hopes to strike at Freek's Mill. "It's a comfortable fun place that’s serious about our food product, but not really serious about much else," said Stewart, a construction company owner who went to culinary school.
Freek's Mill serves seasonal New American small plates with a focus on vegetables.
Cauliflower with romesco sauce and mojama, a cured tuna fillet, at Freek's Mill.
Stewart said he was inspired to launch the restaurant in part because he wants his young children to learn where their food comes from and the work that goes into producing it. Chef Chad Shaner — a former executive sous chef at Union Square Cafe — uses locally-grown ingredients whenever possible.
The restaurant will buy some of its produce from Starling Yards, a farm started by a pair of Brooklyn artists who moved to Dutchess County. Stewart knows one of the farm's owners from his construction business and had him create a custom plaster wall for Freek's Mill.
“To have that relationship for me is very important and it sets the tone for what we want to do,” Stewart said. “It’s not just farm-to-table, it’s about understanding the people and the hard life those people live to produce that food.”
Though it's only been open a few nights, a few dishes are already becoming crowd favorites, Stewart said. They include roasted and smoked kohlrabi served with grits and North Carolina-style barbecue sauce ($16) and roasted carrots served with yogurt and peanut dukka (an Egyptian condiment) for $12.
There's also a salad of dandelion greens, fried chicken livers and egg ($12), sunchoke agnolotti pasta with lobster and chanterelle mushrooms ($20), and smoked chicken casserole with nettles and preserved lemon ($21).
The extensive beverage menu focuses on Beaujolais, chenin blanc and Georgian wines.
The dessert line-up includes Vietnamese iced coffee cake with condensed milk ice cream ($11) and apple crostada with cheddar cheese ice cream ($11).
The restaurant takes it name from a mill that once stood on the shores of Gowanus Creek. Stewart said that's another nod to the idea of making people more aware about the origins of their food.
"The land used to be farm land and the mill was where local people took their grain to get milled, and they really knew where their food was coming from," Stewart said.
Freek's Mill is one of several new eating and drinking establishments to open in Gowanus in recent months. Others include:
► Dirty Precious, a cocktail bar headed by three women, at 317 Third Ave. near First Street.
► Strong Rope Brewery, a microbrewery highlighting New York state ingredients, at 574A President St. off Fourth Ave.
► Insa, a Korean barbecue and karaoke lounge started by the owners of Red Hook's Good Fork, at 328 Douglass St. between Third and Fourth avenues.
► Surfish Bistro II, a spacious Peruvian seafood restaurant that's a spinoff of the Park Slope eatery helmed by chef Miguel Aguilar, at 550 Third Ave. at 14th Street.
