Bed-Stuy is about to get even more dining options with two new restaurants slated to debut in the coming weeks: French-themed Badaboom and Mexico City cantina-inspired Dolores.
Badaboom plans to open its doors sometime this week at 421 Bainbridge St., on the corner of Howard Avenue. The restaurant will serve rotisserie chicken and French-influenced comfort dishes and wine.
Partners Henry Glucroft — of Bushwick’s Henry’s Wine and Spirits and Sunrise/Sunset —and Charles Gerbier, who recently opened the nearby wine bar Frog, are behind the new restaurant.
Starting with dinner only, likely Wednesday through Sunday, Badaboom will be led by a former chef from Place des Fêtes and Oxomoco. While rotisserie chicken is the centerpiece, the menu will also include steak frites, fish, vegetarian dishes, and seasonal sides. Appetizers are expected to run $10 to $20, with entrées in the $25 to $45 range. Beer and wines (largely French leaning) will round out the drink list.
Glucroft said the aim is to do classics in a quality way, “nothing too adventurous, so to speak, good food that we’re hoping the neighborhood can say, ‘Man, I just want to go out for a nice steak frites, I just want a good meal close to home’, kind of hitting that spot,” he said. “We definitely want to keep it affordable, but also want to be able to focus on quality and really hitting that nice neighborhood restaurant.”
Both Glucroft and Gerbier live nearby and Glucroft said they want to fill a gap in the area of Bed-Stuy that is somewhat underserved by sit down options. “We were able to work out and really integrate with the landlord so that hopefully we’re able to build something that lasts a little while in a cute corner.”
Glucroft and Gerbier have already transformed the corner space—previously a deli that closed sometime between 2020 and 2021—with an eye-catching bright blue facade and the restaurant’s name tiled into the doorway.
A few blocks westward, Dolores is preparing to open at 397 Tompkins Ave., on the corner of Jefferson Avenue. The team behind the project includes Cressida Greening and Emir Dupeyron, the couple who own Winona’s in Bed-Stuy, along with Leanne Favre, who runs the bar program at Winona’s. (Near Woodhull Hospital on Flushing, Winona’s is known for its seasonally changing menu.)
Dolores draws inspiration from the cantinas the couple loves to visit in Dupeyron’s native Mexico City. “We just wanted to hone in on Mexico City’s food specifically, and what makes that special,” Greening said. Dolores was the name of Dupeyron’s great grandmother, and Greening said it felt appropriate for the restaurant, with dolor meaning pain or sorrow in Spanish, and a cantina being a place you typically go to drown those.
Dolores will serve small plates and tacos, allowing diners to mix and match or just stop in for a snack and a drink. “One of the signature tacos is called El Rey and it is with a flour tortilla from Caramelo and carne asada, so some grilled, beautiful steak, just like super simple, but tasty,” Greening said.
The rotating menu of tacos will include tacos de lengua, tacos del día, bar snacks, and daily guisados (braises or stews). Cocktails will emphasize mezcal and other agave-based spirits, with drinks priced around $16 and food items ranging from $5 to $25.
“We want it to really be a neighborhood spot, we’re not doing reservations for that reason. We want it to be for Bed-Stuy — we all live here, we all live on Jefferson,” she said, adding that so far people walking by have been very excited about the opening.
Dolores hopes to open by the end of the month, starting with dinner service Wednesday through Sunday from 4 p.m. to midnight. The team eventually plans to expand to seven days a week and offer brunch. The space was previously home to Oddly Enough, a bar that closed in 2024.
Badaboom and Dolores are part of a wave of new dining spots arriving in Bed-Stuy and Ocean Hill this summer and fall. One of these, Olmo, is, like Dolores, a Mexico City-inspired cantina but tacos are not on the menu.
This story first appeared on Brooklyn Paper’s sister site Brownstoner
