Slew of New Food and Drink Spots Set to Open in Fort Greene Starting in the Fall

Fort Greene is set to get at least five new restaurants or bars within blocks of each other over the fall and winter.

Forma Pasta Factory, Margot, Slutty Vegan, Bar Francis and a so-far unnamed spot are all gearing up to open within a few steps of Fulton Street, between Vanderbilt Avenue and South Elliott Place.

Margot and the unnamed restaurant (currently doing business at 007 Nigel LLC.) have applied for full liquor licenses with Community Board 2, whose Executive Committee will hear the applications on August 22 before they are voted on by the full board. Slutty Vegan, a vegan burger restaurant with multiple outlets in Georgia, Bar Francis, run by coffee company Hungry Ghost, and Forma Pasta Factory, which has a location in Greenpoint, have all made opening announcements on Instagram.

Margot, which will be at 69 Lafayette Avenue, currently has an online job posting saying the new restaurant is seeking an executive chef, “to join the dynamic team for our restaurant, Margot. Margot is a Brooklyn restaurant serving unfussy New American cuisine, set to open late winter/early spring in Ft. Greene.”

The restaurant will be located inside the ground floor of the four story stone building at 69 Lafayette Avenue. The space housed Academy Restaurant from at least 2006 to 2015, PropertyShark records show. The first floor is also a commercial space currently occupied by Serenity Palace Spa.

The other application with CB 2 was filed by 007 Nigel LLC, with no indication for the new spot’s name. The application is for 7 Greene Avenue. The ground floor space previously housed No. 7 Restaurant, which closed just over a year ago and moved to 627 Vanderbilt Avenue.

Right next door, at 5 Greene Avenue, Forma Pasta Factory will be setting up shop, taking over the space that used to be The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. Forma Pasta Factory’s original location in Greenpoint serves up affordable pastas for between $13 and $16, and more tasty Italian-inspired fare, and also retails its homemade pasta and sauces for home cooks.

David Johnson of Forma Pasta Factory told Brownstoner the Fort Greene location would be much the same in menu and price point as the Greenpoint location, and that the team was hoping to have doors open in November.

Just around the corner, at 690 Fulton Street, Slutty Vegan founder Pinky Cole will be launching her popular (and long-line inducing) vegan burgers to a Brooklyn audience on September 17, she told Good Morning America.

The restaurant is Cole’s first outside of Georgia, where she has multiple locations of the plant-based burger joint. In a press release sent out earlier this year, Cole said: “It’s an honor to be opening a concept in such an established space, just down the street from where Biggie Smalls grew up, and to bring more delicious vegan food to the Brooklyn community.” Prior to Slutty Vegan, the ground floor space on the corner of Fulton Street and South Portland Avenue (the building famous for its larger-than-life Biggie Smalls mural) was occupied by Habana To Go and briefly home to The Broccoli Bar, also a vegan eatery, which closed more than five months ago.

In an Instagram post at the time, The Broccoli Bar said: “What the Broccoli Bar set out to accomplish in Brooklyn was exactly this: to make vegan food fun, accessible, and delicious in a neighborhood abundant with cultural diversity, community connection, and future possibilities. We’ve learned, too, that mission fulfillment can look different from what was expected at the onset, and in this case, the outcome could not be more fulfilling. We are 110% confident that the @sluttyveganatl team and @pinky907 are going to build upon making vegan food fun, accessible, and (outrageously) delicious in a neighborhood that has been primed for it, that wants it, in a world that needs it. From Broccoli to Burgers, baby it’s all the same…Vegan food and vegan life at 690 Fulton Street…it’s lit…all aboard…go get Slutified!”

Also opening its doors in coming months is Bar Francis, a cocktail bar located at 810 Fulton Street on the corner of Vanderbilt Avenue. Bar Francis is the sister bar to Prospect Heights’ Sweet Polly, and both are run by the Hungry Ghost Coffee crew. Hungry Ghost made the announcement of the new bar on Instagram, saying it would be opening the new watering hole in the fall.

The bar takes up one of the commercial spots in the new 12-story mixed use development that runs along Fulton Street from Vanderbilt to Clermont Avenues. The 363 unit building was developed by RXR and completed in 2019.

[Photos by Anna Bradley-Smith]

Related Stories

• Caroline’s Donuts Opens Its Doors in Bed Stuy
• Fort Greene Landmark Lafayette Grocery and Dairy Shuts Up Shop
• Cafe and Plant Store Botani Preps to Open on Bed Stuy Corner

Email tips@brownstoner.com with further comments, questions or tips. Follow Brownstoner on Twitter and Instagram, and like us on Facebook.