Chef Hugue Dufour Finally Brings That M. Wells Magic to Brooklyn (2025)

By Scott Lynch

In the summer of 2010, back before Instagram and TikTok got people referring to their food as “viral,” back when much of Long Island City was still an industrial wasteland/street art mecca, chef Hugue Dufour and his wife and business partner Sarah Obraitis opened M. Wells in an abandoned diner on a decidedly unlovely stretch of 49th Avenue. Slinging mushroom bread pudding slathered in foie gras, blood sausage hash, a snail-and-marrow snack for the ages, and all at prices that rarely hit the $20 mark—it felt like a miracle.

Here was a world-class chef (I also had the privilege of wolfing Dufour’s unabashedly carnivorous stuff in 2008, at his prior venture Au Pied de Cochon in Montreal) in an extremely fun and funky space, cooking things this town had never seen. And though lines and table waits did eventually materialize, for a brief, glorious moment, anyone willing to make the trek (me) had ready access to an incredible array of rich culinary wonders.

M. Wells Diner only had a one-year run–the landlord refused to renew their lease, and the building has sat vacant and decrepit ever since–but Dufour and Obraitis weren’t willing to give up on LIC, running the superb M. Wells Dinette inside MoMA PS1 for seven years, and the expansive M. Wells Steakhouse—or “Mothership,” as they prefer to call it—over in a former auto body shop on Crescent Street, before shutting it all down for good at the end of last year.

Ah, but the M. Wells magic lives on. And this time, the couple has landed in Brooklyn.

As of this month, Dufour, Obraitis, and several key members of the M. Wells service and kitchen crew have set up shop in New York Distilling Company, located on the still-semi-barren side of Flushing Avenue. “This place is just so cool,” Obraitis told Brooklyn Magazine. “It’s in this almost lawless area, like the Diner was. No one really bothers you here. You can do so much. And yet you go a block or two and it’s like another civilization.”

In this latest iteration, M. Wells will mostly focus on special events, series, and collabs. The distillery has a large kitchen where the team has set up shop for the foreseeable future, but there’s no gas, just convection ovens, though Obraitis hinted that there might be some outdoor live-fire cooking involved once the weather warms up.

First up at the M. Wells HQ is Dufour’s series of epic, signature Sugar Shack brunches, which ran for the last three Sundays in April, and may soon have more installments down the line.

Last weekend was insane—a three-plus hour, five-course, fifteen-dish feast that vibed more like a party than a sit-down restaurant meal and had me swooning throughout.

Dufour loves changing things up—”It’s hard for me to keep a dish on the menu for more than two days in a row,” he said—so your brunch may differ from mine. But among the many highlights of the maple-syrup-infused marathon were the flaky and shockingly big-flavored turkey and almond pastilla, the intense seafood sausage, and, maybe most especially, the platter of paté, rillettes, and gravlax, served with some outrageous condiments (pear and maple mustard, anyone?) and sticks of first-rate focaccia.

Also, Dufour’s pork ribs were some of the best I’ve ever had. Same with his meaty, maple-y baked beans. And then before (or was it during?) dessert, you get a big bowl of melted cheese swimming in syrup. After dessert, the crew comes out and drizzles even more hot syrup on a bed of snowy ice and twirls it up into “lollipops.” So your last bite of the day is essentially just a huge spoonful of chewy maple syrup, which makes for a fantastic finish.

Meanwhile, a live band runs through three separate sets, everybody’s getting tipsy—you’re sitting in a distillery, after all—and, if you’re as fortunate as I was, your communal tablemates have now become your friends, complete with a group chat and vague plans to listen to records together.

Dufour and Obraitis have a bunch of other things in the works too, including a possible “Hamburger North America” collab with George Motz of Hamburger America in SoHo. Obraitis said they are also working on things with the Montauk outfit Dock to Dish, the excellent restaurant Houseman in Manhattan’s Hudson Square, and the Greenpoint Vietnamese favorite Di An Di.

And the couple is loving their new semi-freedom from all the less fun aspects of owning a full-service restaurant. “We’re really feeling nicely decompressed, just enjoying the memories,” said Obraitis. “We lived out a dream in Long Island City, but we carry a lot of friends and followers with us to Bushwick. And the site where we’ve landed lets us focus solely on doing what we love most: making food and hosting people.”

M. Wells is now located at New York Distilling Company, 573 Johnson Avenue at the corner of Gardner Avenue, where they will host special events, collabs, and series. Follow M. Wells on Instagram or check out their website for announcements and details.