Inside Chef Jeremy Salamon’s Debut Restaurant, Agi’s Counter

Chef Jeremy Salamon can still vividly recall the first time he was actually cognizant of food as a child.

 “I remember eating really disgusting pickles at a deli in Florida with my grandfather,” he explains with a smile, standing in the dining room of his Brooklyn restaurant, Agi’s Counter. “That's one of my earliest memories: just how bad that pickle was.”

But that is also the magic of food, no matter how humble or grand, disgusting or delicious. The ways in which the core human sense of taste intertwines with memory like a DNA strand allows one’s culinary experience to leave an emotional aftertaste that lingers on the brain. And it is also the guiding light for Salamon in his career: to craft food that doesn’t just taste extraordinary, but also helps to immortalize a moment in time for his diners.

After beginning his culinary journey at 7 years old in south Florida, Salamon has anchored his career in New York for the last decade. He has worked at renowned restaurants such as Gabrielle Hamilton’s beloved Prune and the French gastropub Buvette before becoming the executive chef at The Eddy in the East Village as well its sister restaurant The Wallflower. All the while, he was bringing his own story to the acclaimed establishments in the form of pop-ups, celebrating his Hungarian and Jewish heritage through food.

Still, there is a big difference between functioning as an executive chef, and being a restaurant owner, one that Salamon has been discovering over the last 17 months.

At just 27 years old, Salamon opened his first restaurant, Agi’s Counter in November 2021, while New York was attempting to create a new normal in the wake of the pandemic. It was a massive undertaking, one that was created through savings and a $65,000 kickstarter campaign.

Shepherding and maintaining the restaurant has been arduous, and at times emotionally challenging in ways that even his experience in culinary school and as a professional couldn’t have prepared him for, but Salamon is taking it in stride. 

“As a business owner, you're always pivoting, and things are happening at what feels like the speed of light. I'm learning to adapt quicker to everything, and processing it all at the same time. I’m only human, and I’m only one person. But I have a really great team as well as people that I look up to that have owned restaurants [and worked with]—they have been very helpful along the way.”

A love letter to his Hungarian grandmother, Agi’s Counter is Salamon’s attempt to preserve the culture of his Eastern European roots, while evolving them with his own culinary sensibilities. His menu is full of creative variations on traditional staples from his ancestry, like the Hungarian crepe Palacsinta, this time topped with maple and plum compote and melted butter, or a schnitzel made with soft-shell crab and lemon.

“Like a lot of chefs, I watched my mother and my grandmothers, and they each had their own approach to cooking. My mom was a fabulous cook, but she went in and out of teaching, so she cooked out of necessity [with her schedule]. And then my nana would put on a big show, cooking out of this massive French cookbook or or making onion rings from scratch or mile high cakes. But my Grandmother Agi would cook more for what felt like family. They all had their own superpower, and as I got older, I realized I wanted to combine all three of those together.”

His food is made in a modest but impressive kitchen the size of an average home cooks kitchen. (Well, maybe the kitchen of someone who doesn’t live in New York City.) Though the space is tight, Salamon and his chefs work diligently and affably, prepping and then cooking to order once service starts, all in view from the large window opening the dining room to the kitchen.

Speaking from the signature counter, which serves as the restaurant’s tentpole, Salamon is reflective of the journey in creating his restaurant, a concrete space that once existed in the reverie of his imagination.

“You picture it for so long, and on the day we opened, it felt like the end scene of a movie. The hero did it, and the camera pans out, and the credits roll. But then it’s, like, ‘alright, what next? What comes after happily ever after?”

But for now, Salamon is taking the time to relish in creating experiences similar to the one he had that fateful day in south Florida with his grandfather as a child. 

“The other day, I was really stressed, I was looking at the counter during brunch, and there was a father with his relatively newborn child his wife and his mother. He was spoon-feeding the baby and said, ‘This is your first Agi’s soup!’ In that moment, and other moments over the course of the year, it’s made me remember how important it is that I’m a part of somebody else’s life for a moment. I don’t know if that baby is going to remember that soup, but it certainly feels good to give someone that moment in time.”

published 4.30.23.