My Slope Saturday: Jay Kumar
The owner of neighborhood eateries Folk and Lore shares his own story – and his Saturday routine.
Leda Strong is a native New Yorker who lives in Park Slope with her husband, Andrew. Follow Leda on Substack for more.
Jay Kumar’s two Park Slope restaurants, Lore and Folk, are a labor of love. In his kitchens, Jay’s love of cooking sizzles and steams, seeping into the flavors of his childhood in Mangalore, India. He left home for culinary school in Switzerland in 1989, and stayed there for 29 years – working at the Hilton Hotel Basel, where he had trained, before setting off to start his own takeout and delivery service and later opening three namesake restaurants – until he met “this girl from Brooklyn,” Daria Brit Greene, in 2018. Daria hired Jay to work in VIP dining and operate a coffee shop at the Scope Art Fair in Basel, but the partnership proved to be more than professional. The two fell quickly and deeply in love, and, not wanting to gamble the relationship on long distance, Jay “sold everything” and moved to Brooklyn to live with Daria in June 2019; they married that December. Their love story landed Jay in the Slope, and ultimately, at the helm of two gems of local dining. But it’s his love of the community his restaurants serve that shines the brightest in his jewel-toned eateries. “This is a place which is yours,” he tells me.
Before it was ours, his first Brooklyn restaurant, Lore, was a concept Jay dreamed up while living in upstate New York. In early 2020 Daria, Jay’s wife, was working as the C.O.O. for former New York Knicks star Amar’e Stoudemire when the Covid pandemic upended life as we knew it. Stoudemire, who was playing basketball overseas at that time, invited Daria to bring her family to live at the farm he owns in the Hudson Valley; she obliged, and they spent a year there. When they returned to Brooklyn in April 2021, Jay and Daria began looking for restaurant spaces and found a charming but “shabby”-looking corner storefront at 15th Street and 7th Avenue. Jay tracked down the property’s owner on LinkedIn, and by October 2021, had signed a lease for what would become Lore.
With the benefit of a revived excitement for dining out following Covid, Lore saw a successful opening in February 2022. Come summer, business slowed, and Jay learned that traffic wanes in his new neighborhood during school recess. He credits restaurant week in 2022 with buoying their business until more locals – and the Michelin Guide – caught on. Lore appeared as a recommended restaurant in the Michelin Guide in 2022 and 2023, and earned Bib Gourmand honors in 2024 and 2025. But for Jay, the highest praise comes from his customers. When a Lore regular told him about a vacant space for sale on 6th Avenue near her apartment, hoping he could do something with it, he listened. (It’s not an entirely new phenomenon for Jay, who opened his first restaurant in Switzerland after a faithful patron of his takeout service offered to fund it.) Jay and another Park Slope resident with the means to buy the unit went to see it. “It was a mess,” he says, but the acquaintance purchased it in summer 2024 and subsequently leased it to Jay, who says the appeal of the unassuming space was that “we could do whatever we want[ed] with it.” Following a year of transformation: work permit navigations, renovations, and interior design by Daria – who also designed Lore – Jay opened Folk, his cocktail-forward concept and second Park Slope restaurant. “The reason why we wanted to do it here is because of this community,” he says.
Now, his Saturday routine revolves around the two restaurants, as he pinballs back and forth to ensure smooth operations at both establishments and to chat with his customers – both human and canine – while carving out time for family, coffee, and pastries along the way.
“YOU CAN’T SLEEP IN”: Jay’s Saturdays begin at 6 a.m. It’s an early start, but a precious one: he spends those mornings with Daria, their twelve-year-old son, and their dog, a black and white goldendoodle named Times (look out for her namesake cocktail on the menu at Folk). They’re all early risers, he says, so “you can’t sleep in.” They eat breakfast and hang out until Jay heads to Lore for brunch service.
PUPPY LORE: Jay arrives at Lore at 10 a.m. to check in with the kitchen – and canine – crew. “I’ll check what the situation is — if they need any help I help them out in the kitchen to get things sorted,” says Jay. But he’s also there to catch up with some of his favorite regulars. “I always have guests who come with dogs. I’m a sucker for dogs,” he says. (He is, after all, a Park Slope resident.) “I have Heath, who’s a Pitbull, I have Nala and her brother who come – two Golden Retrievers. There’s a Maltese,” he says, smiling. “They all go crazy because I give them sausages. Chicken sausages. So they bring their parents.” While the dogs dine on their minced poultry delights, Jay makes sure the humans are well-fed, too. “I eat something to see what the quality is,” he says. (If Jay is ever looking to hire for that role, I will happily submit my resumé.)
FOLK TALES: Jay stays at Lore until 1 p.m. and then walks to Folk to greet his kitchen staff when they arrive. He speaks with his chef, Ryan, who was a regular diner at Lore that serendipitously lost his job just as Jay was hiring at Folk. While Ryan coordinates the kitchen, Jay does more administrative work, like placing orders for the next week, getting his schedule sorted, and addressing any issues needing immediate attention. When the service staff arrive at 4 p.m., Jay meets with them to run through the lineup for the evening. “We are a small restaurant, so we need to have [each table] in the right way.” Jay stays at Folk through the first hour of dinner service, from 5-6 p.m.
COFFEE BREAK: Jay’s next sojourn is back to Lore, where he spends the hours of 6:00-7:30 or 8 p.m. He often punctuates the eleven-minute walk between his two restaurants with visits to coffee shops and bakeries along the route: some favorites include Couleur Cafe, Techne Kafe, and Le French Tart (where he is also wont to pick up a European-style sandwich on a baguette and some cannelés). When it comes to neighborhood dining writ large, Jay frequents Giuseppina’s, Luigi’s, Giovanni’s Brooklyn Eats, Terre (“I am a sucker for Italian,” he says), Idashi, and Luya Omakase (“...and Japanese”). Other go-tos include Siren, Miolin, Sunrise Espresso Bar and Terrace Restaurant and Bakery.
COMMUNITY SERVICE: Jay arrives back at Folk around 8 p.m. to chat with his diners, many of whom are locals – the bar and high-tops are walk-in only, meaning nearly half the seats in the restaurant are intended for neighborhood, well, folks. He prides himself on building true community spaces, where all feel welcomed and valued: flitting from table to table during dinner service, he alights at each like a bearded butterfly. “That caring is, I think, the most important thing in hospitality,” he says. “That caring part, just saying hello to people…when I’m [at Folk or Lore], I go to all the tables, I say hello…I feel grateful and humble that they are here. They could be anywhere they want, but they are here.” But his devotion to best-in-class hospitality extends even to diners outside his restaurants – every Friday, he sends sixty portions of food to City Harvest, a non-profit that distributes meals from restaurants to New Yorkers facing food insecurity. Jay particularly has the Muslim and South Asian communities in mind, providing them with the dishes they actually want and, under Halal regulations, can eat. Last year, Jay estimates his restaurants donated about four thousand pounds of food to City Harvest and Rethink Food, another non-profit battling food insecurity.
SPARE TIME: If you don’t see Jay at one of his two restaurants, it may be that he’s busy modeling for Rolex. A self-proclaimed “watch nerd,” Jay began his timepiece collection at the age of 21, and today counts himself a member of “all the watch societies around here,” including Gotham Watch Club, RedBar’s New York City chapter, and the Horological Society of New York. In 2024, Jay appeared on “Talking Watches,” a popular conversation series on Hodinkee, a website beloved by watch enthusiasts and collectors. Jay was incredulous at the invitation – previous features on the show include musicians like Ed Sheeran and John Mayer, and athletes like all-star MLB pitcher Marcus Stroman. But when Hodinkee and Watches of Switzerland asked Jay less than two years later to star in a promotional video for Rolex, that was “the coolest thing ever.” The feature aired last month, and you can watch it here.
True to form, when I met with Jay, he was wearing a vintage Rolex from his birth year, 1967 – a gift from Daria – along with a vintage Minerva from 1951. “I wear two watches all the time,” he says, which may be why he can give such precise timing when it comes to his Saturday routine. He leaves Folk around midnight, he tells me, goes home, takes a cold shower, eats some yogurt, is in bed by 2 a.m. and is up at 6:00 the next morning to “do it all again.” All in a day’s work.
At the end of my conversation with Jay, he offered to cook me something. Not wanting to put him to work on the one day his restaurants are closed, I politely declined, then almost immediately regretted that decision. Instead, I told him that I’d return soon for a proper meal as a patron at one of his restaurants. Maybe I’ll be sitting there, in one of the kumquat-colored velvet booths at Folk, when he walks through the doors next Saturday.
