Chef's Table at Brooklyn Fare, the eccentric 18-seat restaurant in downtown Brooklyn, has just about everything its customers could want, except more seats. The borough's only three-star Michelin restaurant (one of seven in the city) has a three-star review from The New York Times and attracts a devoted clientele that reserves six weeks ahead.
What it does not have, however, is a New York City Department of Health restaurant-inspection grade of A, B or C in its window, even though it has been open for more than three years.
Is there favoritism here, or skulduggery? Has some special secret exemption been granted?
The answer is no. Since the restaurant is in a mark et that earns 51 percent of its revenues from grocery sales, it is under the jurisdiction of the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets.
Brooklyn Fare is, like 9,568 other markets and grocery stores, covered under Article 20C of New York's agriculture and markets law, which makes it subject to scrutiny by state inspectors. And the state has not adopted the controversial city letter-grading system.
âChef's Table has been inspected five times since 2009, and has had satisfactory inspections,â said Joe Morrissey, a spokesman for the state agriculture department. Such markets are inspected at least once a year by the state, and wherever applicable, the agency also inspects the production of the food in markets where people sit down and eat. (Mr. Morrissey said the state agriculture department could offer no estimate of how many markets have restaurants in the five boroughs.)
The restaurant's owner, Moe Issa, confirmed that the restaurant is un der the jurisdiction of the agriculture department and is not required to post letter grades.
A spokeswoman for the city health department, Alexandra Iselin Waldhorn, said the department had no comment on restaurant jurisdictional issues between the city and the state in markets.
To make things more confusing, Mr. Morrissey said that some restaurants in markets are required to have letter grades. That's when a market sublets space to a separate business for use as a restaurant. Since it's a restaurant, and not a market licensed by the state, that business is covered by the city health code and must post letter grades.
As for Chef's Table, it is not the only high-end restaurant to escape the strictures of the city's letter-grading system, which has been popular among diners while being excoriated by some restaurateurs as unfair and costly. Eataly, the high-end Italian megastore in Manhattan, has seven restaurants, and six of them post no inspection grades . That seventh restaurant, the beer garden Birreria, is on the roof, technically outside the market. And so it has a letter grade from the city: an A.
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