We had a late lunch at this nouveau diner in Brooklyn Heights. You might not know this diner only opened two years ago, and that’s by design.

A rainy Sunday afternoon with a five-year-old feels a bit like a prison sentence if you don’t leave the house. The L train weekend shutdown left Manhattan out of reach, but the Brooklyn Heights branch of the Brooklyn Public Library keeps Sunday hours. Downtown we headed.

The children’s section of the library is one of the saddest I’ve been in. I’m convinced nobody at the Brooklyn Public Library has actually met a child, or if they have, their entire life’s mission is bringing them misery. I browsed a few picture books while our five-year-old enjoyed screen time on the computers, but soon we were ready to eat having skipped breakfast and lunch. A picky eating five-year-old has kept us limited to destinations with French fries, and so I pulled up to the nearest diner and found the Montague Diner two blocks away.

The Montague Diner is relatively new having just opened in March of 2024 to positive reviews. The spot had previously been home to the neighborhood favorite, Happy Days Diner before closing following the pandemic in late 2022. Brownstoner has more details regarding the pandemic-induced shutdown.

But diners are institutions, and just as the last one exited, a new one entered stage right. According to Chris Crowley at Grub Street, the new diner opened on a dare. Filmmaker Gabriel Nussbaum saw the empty space just as it hit the market and asked his wife if he should open a diner. According to Crowley, she dared him to do it.

Nussabaum assembled his team of other filmmakers, and they set to work transforming the old diner into a new diner. This new project was not going to be a refreshed version of the business there before, but a new thing entirely. And the interior feels just like a film set. Stepping into the restaurant is like stepping into a classic facsimile of a mid-century diner. To be clear, this is a good choice. The dining room feels cozy and warm, the kind of place you want to spend time.

The colors, the construction, and the accents all hint at something from the past. But it’s all too well kept and new to actually be old, and that freshness gives it away. I wanted to spend time here. I wanted it be my neighborhood diner.

We arrived on the early side for the dinner crowd. We snagged the last booth, but there were plenty of empty tables. That would change while we sat there with most of the tables filling before left.

The menu has been thinned down from what you might expect from a diner. This is a common refrain at the other diners rehabilitated this decade, like Three Decker Diner in Greenpoint. There are good reasons to give a menu a trim. Small kitchens only have so much storage. Being excellent at fewer things is probably better than being mediocre at all of the things. But the Montague Diner takes this a bit further. The menu is contained to two pages of food more like a modern fine dining restaurant than a diner.

Nevertheless, breakfast can be had all day, but some other diner classics simply aren’t on the menu. No gyros, no Reuben sandwich, no matzah ball soup, but there were a handful of entrees and specials that seemed intriguing. Had we been there later, or without a five-year-old, I might have been tempted by the chicken schnitzel.

But we weren’t here for dinner. This was decidedly lunch. Late lunch. Linner.

My wife ordered the Montague Grilled Cheese and a creamy tomato soup. It was a rainy afternoon, and soup sounded good, so I ordered the soup too.

Here’s where there was something of a mixed bag. The grilled cheese seemed rushed, but also not well cooked. The cheese wasn’t melted through, and the exterior was simply not toasted enough. And while you can argue over whether mayonnaise or butter makes a better fat on the bread’s exterior, you need at least one or the other to get a bit of color and flavor.

The ascetic menu too comes through in the bred choice. I know this will sound like Brooklyn privilege, but surely in the year 2026 we have a slightly more interesting bread than this.

I went with the patty melt, which was in fact fully melted. Still, I would have enjoyed a bit more color on the bread, a little caramelization to bring out the flavors. Otherwise, it was a fairly standard lunch counter patty melt. Simplicity seems to be the goal here, and they achieve it well enough. The cooked up onions added a little sweetness.

One tip though is to request a pickle if you want one, because they are good but the menu notes that you have to ask.

The creamy tomato soup was a decent side for the sandwiches, especially on a rainy day. Is there anything more classic? It was thick, and the dash of oil on the top added a bit of extra flavor. I’m not ashamed to say it was especially good with a corner of sandwich dipped in.

The five-year-old had a big plate of fries, some of which came home with us in a box. Generally speaking these were well fried, crispy and hot, and they came out fast which is a good way to keep a hungry five-year-old from ruining dinner.

There was plenty to like about this place as a neighborhood spot. The kids menu had buttered noodles and even a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. More interesting though is the menu item: “Pile of fries + Bottle of champagne, $100.” Is there anything more indulgent than fries and champagne? I want to be that person. But here too, we see the theatrics of a filmmaker.

While it’s impossible to predict the future, it does feel like the Montague Diner is destined to become an institution. The food is good enough, the vibes are pitch perfect, and every neighborhood needs a local diner. I couldn’t help feel a bit like an extra on a film set in the perfectly curated space, but then the food came and I stopped thinking too much about that.

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