A highly anticipated $10 burger arrives in Bed-Stuy

Marian Bull is a writer, potter and editor living in Brooklyn. She writes a weekly cooking newsletter called Mess Hall. In our new series called Dishing, Marian will get the story behind a tasty dish at a local restaurant.

There is a linguistic tic you can often observe in restaurant people, both chefs and servers. Watch them take a bite of something delicious, and they’ll offer a quick nod toward the plate and say, “that’s nice.” If the dish is truly exquisite, they’ll maybe raise their eyebrows. It’s a lack of effusion not brought on by snobbery but by the professional nature of their eating: they assess a plate of fried porgy or a quivering scoop of tres leches cake like someone with an office job might assess a spreadsheet.

But at Little Grenjai, a new Thai-American cafe in Bedford-Stuyvesant, this rule doesn’t seem to apply. On a recent Friday morning, with a flooded apartment and a flooded basement at the restaurant, chef Trevor Lombaer bit into one of his own krapow burgers after frying up a plate of them for a photo, then leaned back in his green floral apron and said emphatically: “Oh man.” It was an appropriate response to a dish that could impress even the most jaded New York burger eater.

Lombaer and his wife Sutathip Aiemsaard soft-opened Little Grenjai in September. They began with two cautious weekends, then expanded to five days a week, offering a menu consisting of only a burger, a bowl of congee, a Thai tea cake and coffee service.

The space, a former Chinese takeout spot, is small: just a six-seat counter, a few tables, and a gleaming, glittering red vinyl booth in the corner. An open kitchen and a wall full of merch, designed by Aiemsaard, complete the space.

The café is…