It took off among chefs, owners, line cooks, bussers, bartenders, and anybody else who’d ever worked a brunch shift. “There were so many problems that were occurring, and they weren’t being taken seriously.” But after a decade of seeing, hearing, and experiencing all the horrifying parts of restaurant life, Eli needed an outlet. They were something of a Brooklyn brand name who got a cookbook deal before they opened a restaurant. The handle is plural - because Eli and Max had become local celebrities in the early 2010s, two young brothers working at some of the city’s hottest restaurants - Eli at Mile End and Max at Roberta’s. This wasn’t the initial intention of the account. When everybody in hospitality was scared about their health, their jobs, the future of their businesses, I was interacting with all these people who were in different points and parts of the industry, channeling my own fear and general rage.” “They became a format for me to distill down big thoughts into a succinct delivery mode. He found therapy in an untraditional way: “Memes,” he says. Just as Gertie was struggling during COVID, Sussman was stuck at home and worrying about his livelihood, how he’d provide for his family and also keep the doors open at Samesa, the Rockefeller Center shawarma spot he co-owns with his brother, Max. In November 2020, Adler and his restaurant were turned into the public face of the COVID struggle in a New York Times story focused on Gertie’s “desperate fight to survive the pandemic.” Although Gertie, like any other place, is hardly out of the woods, Adler says opening a new restaurant is “a really big moment for us, because it’s been a struggle.” Of course he wants it to succeed instantly, but adds, “The reality is we will tinker and fight until the three of us can make a living off it and continue to grow.”
Rachel Jackson and Nate Adler at the Gertrude’s bar.īesides an interest in classic, artery-clogging recipes and comforting vibes, all parties involved have become unofficial spokespeople for the state of the hospitality industry, both where it’s been and where - hopefully - it can go.
“We’re trying to create this experience in which you feel like you are in a room where you know everyone,” Sussman says. They hope that this latest endeavor can be something along those lines in terms of cuisine, but they also mention reference points such as Sammy’s Roumanian and Blue Ribbon Brasserie as inspiration. Adler and Jackson found success with that formula at Gertie, and Sussman first gained local acclaim around 2013 when he was the chef at Mile End in Boerum Hill. Gertrude’s is the latest spot to offer a contemporary take on classic, Ashkenazi Jewish–leaning dishes. “You never know what people will order and what they’ll gravitate toward until you try to run it.” “These are the debates you have,” Sussman says. He’s aware that two nearby restaurants, Sofreh and Maison Yaki (which recently reopened as the French-leaning Petite Patate), both had tongue dishes on their menus before dropping them. He’s been working on crispy beef tongue that’s first brined in chicken stock and caraway. “I’m still fighting for the tongue,” Sussman declares. The three say they got together because they share similar interests in classic deli and appetizing foods, but they similarly don’t want to lean too heavily on the schmaltz, so to speak. Except at Gertrude’s, you can get the burger with a latke instead of French fries if you’d like. Instead, Sussman was in the back of Nate Adler and Rachel Jackson’s restaurant during off-hours because the three are working together on Gertrude’s, which Adler describes as “sort of a Jewish bistro.” When it opens in Prospect Heights this month, in the space that had been James for a decade and a half, it will offer “a good burger at a good price, and a martini you can actually afford,” Adler says.
But this wasn’t a case where his labor was being exploited. It’s the kind of comment that might appear on Sussman’s Instagram account, which has amassed a giant audience in the past couple years with its regular stream of memes that target the reality of working in the food world today (“Say ‘this is how we did it at my last place’ one more time,” reads a caption above Samuel L. “They’ve got me doing this for free,” he jokes. Eli Sussman isn’t on the payroll at Gertie, the Williamsburg nu-diner that calls itself “Jew-ish” - it has bagels and bialys and a popular turkey-pastrami club topped with bacon - but when I met him there on a recent afternoon, a few minutes after they’d locked up for the day, he was in his white cook’s shirt and apron, getting to work.
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