St. John Frizell runs a small bar and restaurant, Fort Defiance, in the Brooklyn waterfront neighborhood of Red Hook. He is a bartender of the sort often referred to as a mixologist and a restaurateur of skill and passion. His customers are local sharpies and art producers, date-nighters who’ve driven in from Park Slope, families with three generations in tow. The restaurant is a warm destination for those seeking a good drink and a simple meal amid people with similar desires.

I have been eating the chicken-liver pâté at Fort Defiance at least once a month for the past year, sometimes more often, rarely less. In this, I am hardly an outlier. The dish is among the restaurant’s most popular. Pink and creamy, it comes to the table in a magnificent smear, with a dollop of bacon-onion jam, aside rafts of grilled toast. If you’re eating alone, with a novel and a glass of Gamay, the pâté serves as a meal. If you’re eating with friends or family, the pâté begins one, just as beautifully.

The chicken-liver pâté at Fort Defiance is not Frizell’s. When I asked for the recipe, he said he did not know it. Nor did his chef, Matt Fleming. Nor did Fleming’s sous chef, Steve Geuting. The dish is a product of a line cook, Javier Huerta, who says he picked the recipe up from El Argentino, a guy who worked at Fort Defiance a few years ago. Frizell is not sure about that — the old pâté was thicker and far less creamy than Huerta’s, he says — but anyway the recipe was never written down, until now. It results in a rich, velvety mousse with hints of thyme and a base line of Madeira.

Success in the restaurant game has many parents. Most of us accord it to chefs and owners, because it is their names we see on the menus or read in the reviews. But there is often someone farther down the line who is responsible for that dish that you love. The gorditas at Alex Stupak’s celebrated Empellón Cocina in the East Village came to the menu courtesy of a young line cook, Michael Cote, who has since risen to be the chef de cuisine at the restaurant. The ceviches at the Red Cat, Jimmy Bradley’s fine American restaurant in Chelsea, are the responsibility of a Peruvian line cook there, Oscar Pineda. You think Mark Ladner is the talent behind the spiced raisins and citronette dressing on the roasted-vegetable salad at his Del Posto? Think again. Melissa Rodriguez, now an executive sous chef at the restaurant, came up with both.