Kindness, Salt & Never Snapping Out of It

Every once in a while - usually when a dinner party at my house has reached that magical stage where the roast is cooked properly, the guests have stopped checking their phones, and someone is asking for the recipe - I find myself thinking that opening a neighborhood restaurant might actually be a fun ambition.

You feed people. You create a gathering place. You become part of the life of a neighborhood.

Then, channeling Cher in Moonstruck, I mentally slap myself and snap out of it.

Restaurants are hard. The hours are brutal, the margins microscopic, and catastrophe is always lurking just beyond the next delivery order.

Thankfully, some people don't snap out of it.

Doug Crowell is one of them.

Over the years Doug has helped create two of Brooklyn's most beloved neighborhood restaurants - Buttermilk Channel and French Louie - places that understood that hospitality extends far beyond what's on the plate.

I recently interviewed Doug for the New Books Network about Kindness & Salt: Recipes for the Care and Feeding of Your Friends & Neighbors. While the conversation began with the book, it quickly became a discussion about hospitality, community, and what makes certain restaurants feel like part of a neighborhood's identity.

You can listen to the podcast here.

I've known Doug for years, dating back to Buttermilk Channel in Carroll Gardens. Like many Brooklynites, I spent more time than I care to admit thinking about its popovers and buttermilk fried chicken with cheddar waffles. But what made the restaurant memorable wasn't just the food. It was the feeling that everyone belonged there.

That idea sits at the heart of Kindness & Salt. Good food matters. So do people.

We talked about the unlikely journey of Buttermilk Channel from Brooklyn to Tokyo, how a restaurant preserves its character as the world changes around it, and an industry reshaped by the pandemic, rising costs, and changing expectations. Yet the book's central message remains remarkably durable.

A good restaurant feeds people.

A great restaurant helps create a neighborhood.

That's what Buttermilk Channel did. It's what French Louie continues to do. And it's why Kindness & Salt is ultimately about more than recipes.