A beloved, 90-year-old Brooklyn dive bar with a seafaring legacy will enjoy new life as the latest acquisition by a leading operator of Big Apple maritime-themed venues.
Montero Bar & Grill at 73 Atlantic Ave. near the Brooklyn waterfront has been sold to Crew hospitality group, which operates 10 Big Apple venues with a total of around 1,200 seats. They most recently launched 20,000 square-foot Yacht Club overlooking the Hudson River at the Starrett-Lehigh Building.
Alex Pincus, who owns Crew with his brother Miles Pincus, is a longtime friend of Pepe Montero, who’s run his fabled saloon for decades since he took it over from his father, Macedonian-born Merchant Marine sailor Joseph Montero.
“I’ve been going there for years,” Alex Pincus told The Post. “I often stopped by on the way to and from Pilot,” Crew’s nearby place in Brooklyn Bridge Park.
“Pepe said to me, ‘I want to retire, so when you gonna buy this place?’ This was before the pandemic and I thought it was a joke,” Pincus recounted.
“Then he said it again about six months ago,” he continued.
“We had long talks about its future. We want to preserve it as a piece of living history.”
He said Crew will take it over in March.
Montero was a go-to for generations of longshoremen working the nearby docks, but in recent times was embraced by professional-class residents of Cobble Hill, Brooklyn Heights and the Columbia Street Waterfront District. The interior behind a vintage neon sign and cloudy glass windows looks much as it did a half-century ago with vintage harbor paintings, travel mementoes, ship wheels and life preservers.
Pincus said Crew would keep Montero as it was.
“I don’t want to change much at all,” except to re-activate a small kitchen that’s been idle for many years, he said – the “Grill” part of the bar’s name was long out of date.
“It isn’t really run-down, it’s very clean. I find it very beautiful. What we’ll do to it is minimal,” Pincus added. “This is what we do, take historic entities and give them new life.”
Bistro’s farewell
Chez Napoleon, one of the theater district’s last surviving traditional French bistros at 365 W. 50th St., will serve its last escargot de Bourgogne and coq au vin on Jan. 31 after 65 years in business, owner Williams Welles announced.
The cozy, family-run spot that prided itself on “transporting guests to the charm of old-world Paris” was founded in 1960. It fed generations of French seamen during the nearby port’s shipping heyday, along with theatergoers, tourists and local residents since then.
“Chez Napoleon has been our life’s work,” said Welles, who owned it with his mom, Elayne Bruno.
He didn’t cite a specific reason for the closing but said, “Too many economic, staffing, personal and structural factors have finally forced us to shutter our small business for good.”
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