NYC Ferry Restaurant Tour, Part IV: Salty Dog (South Brooklyn Route to Bay Ridge)
I was out for a joyride on the NYC Ferry, looking out the window, when suddenly a Portal opened up in the sky.
“Hello,” it said. “I am a Portal into space and time. I will take you anywhere you wish to go, to any place on earth, at any time in human history. What is your desire?”
“I’m kinda hungry,” I said. “Where would be good for lunch today?”
The Portal hesitated. This was not what it had expected.
“Do you desire many dining options?” it asked finally.
“I do. With nice people walking quiet, relaxing streets.”
“I know just the place. It is called Bay Ridge.”
This was my first ride on the South Brooklyn route of the NYC Ferry, which starts in Corlears Hook on the Lower East Side, then zigzags across the East River between Manhattan and Brooklyn, with ports of call at DUMBO, Wall Street (above), Atlantic Avenue, Red Hook, Governors Island…
— which our jolly Captain called “Gilligan’s Island” —
…then Sunset Park, and finally Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, the terminus of the South Brooklyn Route.
Debarking on the American Veterans Memorial Pier, I saw a strange obelisk.
“Portal, what is this? It looks kind of festive.”
“It is not,” said the Portal. “I have brought you to your lunching destination, and there are many fine restaurants here, and fine people, and walkable streets, but it is not a place beyond human tears.”
I encircled the obelisk and started reading, with the Lower Manhattan skyline in the background, and the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge wheeling into view: “Brooklyn Remembers … For Those Lost on September 11, 2001.”
It was a reminder that New York’s vital present and hopeful future are bound up with its tragic past. I had just been to One World Observatory, better known as the Freedom Tower, a couple of weeks before. As I snapped pictures from the pier, I was glad to see it standing watch over me, as it does so often, so visibly, from so many places in the New York metro area.
The pier also featured a good view of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge. About which, more later.
The underpass that took me beneath the elevated Belt Parkway had some fine aquatic-themed murals as well as some fine SUVs.
I was not the only one passing through the Portal that day.
I made a brief visit to Owl’s Head Park but found it less photogenic than Bay Ridge’s pleasing variety of townhouses. The trim color on the cornices reminded me of a Bonzo Dog Band member, one hand holding a sax, the other holding a sign saying “Wow, I’m really expressing myself!”
I look forward to the day when the red stucco and the blue stucco will live together in peace.
Another form of self-expression is cladding.
Today’s restaurant was located in a converted firehouse. Salty Dog opened for business in 1997 and bills itself as Brooklyn’s Sports Bar. Cue the Procol Harum song.
I guess the dog in a firehat was a dead giveaway.
There he was again, in the pavement!
Another dog was reclining by my seat at the back, in front of the hearth.
My beer mat — which hosted a glass of tap water, since I had a long trip home ahead of me — featured yet another Salty Dog.
Patriots do their drinking here. The wall-mural flag reminded me of the just-glimpsed 9/11 Memorial.
View from my table.
The helmeted bike-delivery dude stood beneath the skylight, TV screens showing sporting events, a wall-mounted NY Jets helmet, and some decorative engine toys.
I had a hot date with an even hotter chicken pot pie.
Chicken pot pie is such a dietary staple for me, my grocery list just abbreviates it as CPP. But no watery Swansons for me. I buy it only because the West Side Market has such a good one, dense with white meat. One pie is good for three meals and I go through one or two a week.
But I was eager to see Salty Dog’s hot take on the subject. I busted into it. The camera was so excited, it forgot to focus. The lighting turned the fork blue.
Plenty of good chicken breast here.
Along with some creamy sauce. That might have been sweet potato rather than carrot. If I’m correct about that, it was a distinctive touch.
Many servers and fellow diners have humored my weird habit of shooting the aftermath of a meal and today’s were no exception.
But this was not my only comfort-food visit to Bay Ridge. In a previous trip on the Rockaway Route Line, which put me near the border between Sunset Park and Bay Ridge, I had been to the Yemen Unity Restaurant at Fifth Avenue and Senator Street. Find Saudi Arabia on a map and check the southwestern end of the big peninsula. That’s Yemen.
The sign above says the food is “authentic” and a friend who spent 10 years living and working in Dubai assures me that the sign is right. I had Lahm, or Lamb, Haneeth: “Our Signature Dish,” says the menu, describing it as “roasted chunks of lamb marinated with our traditional Yemeni spices. Served over rice, with vegetable stew, soup and salad.”
I wished I’d had my Arabic-speaking friend along to dispel the confusion about the lunch special vs. the dinner version. It was, however, a stupendously satisfying meal. Conversation at the table in front of me was boisterous and animated and would have made a great picture with, y’know, people in it. Somehow I felt it was not a good time. These guys behind me were more sedate.
I didn’t stop there. Bay Ridge has a vast and astonishing array of restaurants along Third, Fourth, and Fifth avenues and I just had to squeeze in a pilgrimage to a Bay Ridge Diner. The Bay Ridge Diner, to be exact. In business for a dozen years, I was told (circa 2024).
Can you see the flecks of carrot in my tuna and egg club?
How about now? Another nice touch, like the sweet potato in Salty Dog’s CPP.
And how awesome was it that I got to substitute veggies for the fries?
I didn’t even have to raise the subject myself, as I might have done, meekly and hesitantly, perhaps asking for a salad. No need to overcome my social anxiety to eat healthier. The menu suggested it!
And that wasn’t the only cool thing I saw that day. On the way to this reasonably priced and totally satisfying lunch I visited the Narrows Botanical Garden, with bird feeders in every color of the rainbow.
The Garden is at the western end of Bay Ridge Avenue next to the busy Belt Parkway. You can’t see much of New York Bay along the path, though it’s what gave Bay Ridge (formerly New Utrecht and Yellow Hook, more or less) its name. This was my best shot.
That day I took a long walk down Fifth Avenue to see more of the sprawling neighborhood, which runs more than 30 blocks north to south. There, again, was the Verrazzano. Connecting Brooklyn to Staten Island, it was not a popular idea when proposed by Robert Moses in the early 1960s, slashing present-day Fort Hamilton off the southern end of Bay Ridge. The city’s then-reigning political structure, dominated by five power brokers representing each of the boroughs, overrode the objections.
I had gotten to Bay Ridge by subway that day. (There’s a separate NYC Subway Restaurant Tour, but never mind. Maybe I should call it the NYC Multi-Modal Restaurant Tour.) Here at the Bay Ridge Avenue station is one panel of Strata, a massive series of ceramic murals by artist Katy Fischer, referencing the area’s indigenous, Dutch, and English colonial heritage.
Close-up, the ceramic murals revealed unexpected and pleasing textures. Waiting for a train, I’d rather spend 10 minutes staring at this than into my phone.
The companion murals, on the other side of the platform, were even more visually arresting.
The background of plain black tile made the colors pop a little more. Bay Ridge: Come for the food. Return for the art.
Previously on the NYC Ferry Restaurant Tour:
Part I: The Wharf (Rockaway Route to Rockaway Park)
Part II: Kimo’s Kitchen (Rockaway Route to Rockaway Beach)
Part III: Big John’s (Rockaway Route to Sunset Park)
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