Cherry Point sits on Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint, a few steps from the corner where Bedford Avenue, having flowed all the way across Brooklyn from the shores of Sheepshead Bay, suddenly comes to an end. The area is marked by a cluster of restaurants. Some have a washed-up feeling, as if they’d all been drifting along in Bedford’s currents and had been stranded there. A few stand out in the landscape.

In the fall, Cherry Point took a decisive turn into the second category when a new chef took over, but not everyone in the neighborhood seems to realize it yet. People still tumble in for happy hour, when servers whose hairstyles take a minute to adjust to will pour three-gulp martinis, manhattans and Rob Roys (due for a revival) in little Nick & Nora glasses for $8 each, and then after happy hour ends at 7 p.m. most of the crowd generally drifts out to find somewhere else for dinner. The space, with its old-timey wainscoting and its central bar, is easy to mistake for a tavern.

Let’s say you were among those who stayed put. Contemporaneously with your cocktail, you worked on a few smoked olives, green and warm; swirled a few of the golden, bite-size pig’s head croquettes in a pale-pinkish ketchup made from pears; and became curious about what else this kitchen was up to. At one point you noticed that the dining room suddenly smelled like an herb garden in August, and a minute later Belon oysters on a nest of smoking rosemary branches sailed out of the kitchen opening that lights up the back of the restaurant. You ordered a plate of your own because you wanted to know how the warm oysters would taste under their yellow blankets of smoked rosemary hollandaise.