Intimate encounter

Confidant (Brooklyn Heights)

RESTAURANTS • First Person

My first encounter with the original Confidant didn’t exactly inspire the enduring trust its name invited. Superfluously billed as Industry City’s first full-service restaurant (who cares?), it occupied an enormous space where the tables were still way too close together, and otherwise mostly blended in with all the furniture outlets that the big maw of a mall is better known for. There was obvious talent in the kitchen, though, and the food was good.

Last month, Confidant relocated to the former Colonie space on the southern edge of Brooklyn Heights. It slotted into the spot marvelously, like it’s been there all along.

Confidant 2.0 brought with it the sensational prawn pot pie that I thought should enter the annals of NYC classics even in its original environs. Here, the golden dome probably has a better chance of seizing that rightful spot than it did buried amid mixed-use sprawl.

Also returning: the exceptional maitake mushrooms that previously accompanied a lovely heritage chicken. That bird’s flown the new coop, but the wonderfully nutty fungi now accompany a beautiful duck breast that blushes to an ideal mauve beneath an expertly rendered ribbon of fat between it and a superbly crisp skin. It’s a résumé kind of plate that signals a symphonic kitchen.

The somewhat humbler spicy rigatoni with vibrant ‘nduja is so good, it makes me wish that this excellent iteration of Confidant — a rare second chance in an otherwise punishing hospitality landscape — could have remained just a bit more clandestine, if even just for a little while, so that reservations were more reliably available. –Amber Sutherland-Namako

→ Confidant (Brooklyn Heights) • 127 Atlantic Ave • Wed-Sun 5-10p • Reserve.