You'll Want Frites With That

The Chez Ma Tante team’s classic-brasserie-style Le Crocodile feels familiar, but that’s the point.

- Adam Platt

THERE ARE ALL sorts of reasons why the second act following a surprise hit like Jake Leiber and Aidan O’Neal’s fine little Greenpoint bistro, Chez Ma Tante, can be more difficult and fraught with peril than the first one. Even out in the neighborly, relatively low-key fine-dining precincts of Brooklyn these days, success tends to attract the usual siren song of new money, which often brings with it a whole new set of challenges. How do you manage a larger kitchen staff and a bigger (read: more bankable) room, not to mention a rabble of opinionated new investors? Do you scrap your successful old formulas for an entirely new concept? Or do you reprise beloved recipes for simmered pork shoulder, say, or Chez Ma Tante’s famous brunchtime pancakes, which are popular among the old regulars but may lose a little of their special alchemy in a larger, more impersonal space?