FUMING MAD AT EATERY
B’klyn smoke ‘alarm’
Where there’s smoke . . . there’s furious neighbors.
A trendy Brooklyn restaurant has become the source of anger on its Fort Greene block, where residents claim they are being smoked out of their homes by the eatery’s gimmick of charring nearly everything it serves.
Metta, which is famous for its grilled meats and veggies, vents the smoke out of the roof of its three-story Adelphi Street building and straight into a fourth-floor residential windows next door.
“We’re asking that the stack be raised above all our roofs. Because if you notice, their building is a whole floor below ours. So, of course, the smoke is going into our back yards,” said Virginia Priest, who owns the neighboring four-story apartment building.
“I lost a tenant because of the smoke smell,” she said, describing it as an acrid mix of burning wood and meat that may enticing but quickly grows nauseating when it hits the nostrils.
Priest’s smoke alarms sometimes go off when she leaves her windows open too long, she said.
“It’s just a stinky, irritating odor. It’s like sitting next to a campfire,” said Chris Saporita, an environ- mental lawyer who lives on the fourth floor of another neighboring building.
Locals have been trying to work with the eatery to clean up its act, but owners Henry Rich, Peter Dowling and Alex Riccobono have been “very arrogant and dismissive,” Saporita said.
Despite its vigorous output of smoke, Metta claims to be carbonneutral, meaning it takes steps to have no net contribution to carbon in the atmosphere.
Neighbors have logged 18 airquality complaints to 311 since the eatery opened early last year, and a May 9 inspection by the city’s Department of Environmental Protection resulted in an air-quality violation, an agency rep said.
The case will go before an Environmental Control Board judge on July 9.
“We want to let the judge know the full extent and duration of the problem,” Saporita said.
Repeat ECB offenders may be subject to a cease-and-desist order from the city, but DEP officials say that is not likely because the restaurant installed a smoke filter in March and is acting in good faith.
“We think maybe it’s defective,” Priest said of the filter.
Metta did not respond to messages seeking comment.