Henry Street: Where the good times roll
Restaurant Owners Fondly Recall Decades in the Community
For all the rapid in change in Brooklyn, some streets have delightfully stayed the same.
On Henry Street in North Brooklyn Heights, many restaurant owners fondly recall their decades in the community and the tight bonds they have created with generations of customers since they first hung their shingles.
Jim Montemarano opened a restaurant he originally called 35 Cranberry St. — guess where? — two days before Christmas 1977. His mother and sister were a “very big part of the operation,” he said, as they helped him get off the ground, converting what was originally a “gourmet store” into a more routine sandwich shop, while also providing catering services and a bakery. A move to Henry Street in 1980 proved fortuitous, with several other businesses coming into their own around the same time. Montemarano, whose eatery is now called Cranberry’s, has seen some changes — moving cars for alternate-side parking used to also involve taking stock of broken windows and stolen radios — but for the most part, things have just been steady.
“It’s definitely been a family affair,” Montemarano said. “I was able to raise five children through the work I put into this place. And they each worked here at some point along the way. I had them take orders by talking to the customers eye-to-eye. They would stand on milk crates behind the counter, to see over the register.”