Posted by Lauren Sloss, November 11, 2011 at 11:15 AM
[Photographs: Lauren Sloss]
The savory parmesan toast ($13) on Olea's brunch menu brought on feelings of disbelief and chagrin: how had I never thought of salty, cheesy French toast before? Olea's toast, thickly sliced and eggy, was generously dusted with parmesan, which turned crisp in the frying pan. It was a good vehicle for soaking up the runny yolks spilling from the two well-poached eggs and a healthy dollop of lemony avoglemono sauce. A sprinkling of peas and pea shoots added a fresh sweetness to the dish.
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Posted by Laura Togut, September 13, 2011 at 10:00 PM
[Photos: Laura Togut]
Brooklyn's Dekalb Market isn't like all the other markets that opened this summer—it's open 7 days a week, year-round. It's a collection of semi-permanent store fronts created from salvaged shipping containers. (On the weekends, there's a flea and craft market, too.) Boasting a small but delicious collective of local food shops, it's a great place to stop by for a meal, a drink, an indulgence, or all of the above.
Click through to the slideshow to see what we found there!
Dekalb Market
138 Willoughby Street, Brooklyn NY 11201 (map)
dekalbmarket.com
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Posted by Jessica Allen and Garrett Ziegler, September 12, 2011 at 1:30 PM
Senegalese fried chicken [Photos: Garrett Ziegler]
Abistro on DeKalb. The name itself is an argument, a dare. Not "a bistro," but "abistro," a one-word assertion of authority, a place that might upend commonly held notions of bistro-itude. This Fort Greene restaurant specializes in Franco-African cuisine, but its dishes, like the name, tease you with contradictions.
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Posted by Hannah Smith-Drelich, August 19, 2011 at 1:00 PM
In this great city of ours, one could eat a different sandwich every day of the year—so that's what we'll do. Here's A Sandwich a Day, our daily look at sandwiches around New York. Got a sandwich we should check out? Let us know. —The Mgmt.
Peek-a-boo merguez in a pita. [Photograph: Hannah Smith-Drelich]
A good merguez is hard to find. Thin and serpentine or broad and crumbly, this lamb or lamb-and-beef sausage can be too easily over-spiced and overcooked. The Merques sandwich ($7.50) at Black Iris in Fort Greene is none of the above. Succulent and dark red with pepper and paprika, it lies coiled within the pita like a snake waiting to pounce. A garlicky snake.
"Are you going out after this?" asked my waitress when I was seized with ordering indecision on a Saturday night. "Because if you're not, get the merguez." "Nope, I'm not," I lied. Is it even possible to resist something like that after such a warning?
It was worth it, just for the sausage. The rest of the sandwich is less memorable—pita topped with a canopy of chopped lettuce, tomato, and onion, and drizzled with a too-thin splash of tahini. To truly give the merguez its due, you must beef up (er—lamb-up) its surroundings. With a thick dab or two of Black Iris's surprisingly delicate hummus and a splash of their tomatoey hot sauce, this sandwich becomes deserving of the merguez coiled in it.
Black Iris
228 DeKalb Avenue, Brooklyn NY 11205 (map)
718-852-9800
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Posted by Jessica Allen and Garrett Ziegler, August 15, 2011 at 1:45 PM
Chicken kebab platter [Photos: Garrett Ziegler]
In a time when even casual restaurants are painstakingly designed, it's refreshing to come across a place as humble as Black Iris: some beaded lamps, a few throw pillows in a blocky pattern, and benches carved with domes, minarets, and other elements of an Arabic skyline constitute the sum of the decor. We heard tell of a garden area but didn't see it. Instead, this cash-only Middle Eastern restaurant in Fort Greene offers good food cheaply in an amiable atmosphere, and these days that's quite an accomplishment.
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Posted by Jessica Allen and Garrett Ziegler, May 16, 2011 at 1:15 PM
[Photos: Garrett Ziegler]
All day we had been craving creaminess, so we eagerly ordered the trio of dips ($14) at Olea. Oozy and unctuous, these three spreads were even more satisfying in corporeal form than in our imaginings. Usually it's the opposite: the experience almost never lives up to the dream. Something about this Brooklyn restaurant makes fantasies become real. You know that life isn't actually as great as it is here, yet, for a few moments, great it is.
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Posted by Ben Fishner, January 25, 2011 at 12:30 PM
Editor's note: In "Apps Only," Ben Fishner will be eating his way through New York's appetizer, bar, and lounge menus as your guide to fine dining on a budget. He blogs at Ben Cooks Everything.
Double Decker Broccoli Tacos from No. 7 in Fort Greene. [Photos: Ben Fishner]
These days, No. 7 is perhaps best known for their sandwich shop at the Ace Hotel, but they've been making inventive and sometimes wacky dishes at their Fort Greene gastropub since 2008. With a menu stacked with appetizers and bar snacks, it seemed a perfect destination for a meal of small plates..
After a stellar bread plate that included a thin, cheesy white bean dip and a bowl of quick-pickled cucumbers, we started with a couple dishes from No. 7's bar menu. The Double Decker Broccoli Tacos ($7) consisted of a soft flour tortilla wrapped around a crispy taco shell, filled with hoisin-laced beans, salty feta cheese, pine nuts and battered fried broccoli florets. A very strange taco indeed, but somehow all of these ingredients worked together, forming a really tasty snack. At seven bucks for two of these, the tacos were also a great deal. Also from No. 7's bar menu, we ordered a small French Fries ($4), another great value served up with an incredibly appealing balsamic mayo.
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Posted by Madison Priest, December 22, 2010 at 2:30 PM
[Photo: Kathy YL Chan]
The Brooklyn Flea Market, currently putting in a full week at the Williamsburg Savings Bank in anticipation of Christmas, was madness this last Sunday; the food section, in the back of one of the three (that's right, three) floors of the Flea, is one of the few refuges from the crowd.
Maybe I was just looking for a little bit of order in this mad, mad Flea Market world, but the miniature cupcakes, all in their little concentric circles, seemed to be calling to me. Kumquat Cupcakery is a regular--a pop up bakery that shows up at every Saturday and Sunday at the Brooklyn Flea.
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Posted by Carey Jones, October 21, 2010 at 10:00 AM
[Photographs: Robyn Lee]
The Winners!
#1: Ceci-Cela
55 Spring Street, New York, NY 10012 (map); 212-274-9179; cecicelanyc.com
#2: Petrossian
911 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10019 (map); 212-245-2217; petrossian.com
#3: François Payard Bakery
116 West Houston Street (map); 212-995-0888; payard.com
A good croissant is hard to find. To turn a butter-based dough into a pastry that's simultaneously soft and flaky, shatter-crisp and mouth-meltingly tender, is a difficult thing indeed. With such a pure flavor—butter, heightened by salt and united with flour and transformed into a layered, stretchy dough—the quality of those ingredients and the skill of the pastry chef is critical. And if they're not handled properly, you'll end up with a pastry that's doughy, or flabby, or tough, or bready—not qualities you want in a truly great croissant.
Frankly, plenty of imperfect pastries still taste delicious, particularly after they're popped in the toaster oven or slathered with Nutella. But where can you find a perfect croissant, straight from the pastry case? We wanted to find out.
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Posted by Kathy YL Chan, June 9, 2010 at 4:00 PM
[Photo: Kathy YL Chan]
At the Brooklyn Flea, the usual suspects are all there—cupcakes, more cupcakes, chocolate, more chocolate, yogurt. All that is great, but after a while, you can't help but crave something more exciting. That's why I was so happy to see The Good Batch, found by Anna Gordon, owner and baker. It was her boyfriend's family, originally from the Netherlands, who introduced her to stroopwafels. But it wasn't until a recent visit to Holland that Anna got the idea to just make them herself.
The Classic Stroopwafels, pictured above, are the foundation of the business, and the first you ought to try. Two very thin spiced waffle cookies with a lush caramel filling in the middle. The caramel is on the buttery side, and the whole cookie is best consumed after a brief sit atop a mug of hot tea—when the caramel gets all warm and gooey, the cookie itself softens just a touch, and the whole thing becomes melty and delectable. Each cookie is wide enough to rest atop even the largest of mugs.
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Posted by Carey Jones, March 29, 2010 at 10:00 AM
[Photos: Robyn Lee]
We at Serious Eats have a soft spot in our hearts for carrot cake. And there's no better season for it—it's got those winter spices kicking around, sure, but it's also bright with the promise of carrots and fruits and spring freshness to come.
While we all could agree to love carrot cake, none of us felt we had a definitive favorite. So it was time for another Serious Eats taste test. We fanned out over the boroughs, picked up carrot cakes from every corner of New York—over a 29.6 mile geographic spread, to be exact—and assembled our panel for a carrot-cake tasteoff.
The sweet surprises, the too-sweet surprises, and our favorite carrot cake in New York, in the slideshow above.
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Posted by Carey Jones, December 22, 2009 at 11:00 PM
"Several of these plates were memorable, even remarkable—but we can't go back for them."
Photographs by Robyn Lee
Roman's
243 Dekalb Avenue, Brooklyn NY 11205 (at Vanderbilt; map); 718-622-5300; romansnyc.com
Service: Gracious, if slow
Setting: Now-familiar New Brooklyn
Compare It To: Al Di La, Diner
Must-Haves: Stracchino, house-cured ham, and agnolotti, if on the menu—but they probably won't be
Cost: $8 apps, $10 pastas, $14-$24 small entrees
Grade: B (some dishes merit higher)
There are two reasons, as I see it, to read a review: the broad strokes and the details.
We write to impart some general impressions—what we think of the chef, what we think of the setting—but also to recommend or advise against certain dishes. Presumably, you'd like to know whether a given plate is worth your money or your time.
In the case of Roman's, the newly opened Italian-spirited restaurant in Fort Greene, we can't help you there. There's no standing menu—the dishes, all of them, rotate each night. Mark Firth and Andrew Tarlow's other restaurants (Diner, Marlow & Sons) employ similar conceits, but each has at least a skeleton menu; regulars can have a fallback. The same can't be said of Roman's, where, each night, the day's menu is scribbled out on graph paper for diners to decipher. (Older eyes or those stuck with a hastily scrawled sheet may find this a problem.)
A seasonally inspired, seasonally rotating menu is all but expected in New York restaurants of late. It allows a chef to play to his strengths—his own skills, the ingredients at his disposal. But when taken this far, the lack of a baseline menu can be a disservice to the customer.
A restaurant pulls off a rotating menu when a diner can go in with absolute confidence that each dish that appears will be phenomenal—and of a portion and value that doesn't disappoint. Roman's isn't quite at that level. There's plenty worth eating—and plenty that evidences chef Dave Gould's sure hand in the kitchen. But without a record of unerring excellence, it's hard to recommend Roman's wholeheartedly. You just can't know what you're going to get.
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Posted by Robyn Lee, December 16, 2009 at 10:00 AM
[Photographs: Robyn Lee]
Last Friday morning I walked to Desserts by Michael Allen from my apartment to get cookies for our most recent Chocolate Chip Cookie Championship taste test. Although the walk was probably less than 15 minutes, it felt much, much longer. If you don't recall, last Friday was the day that Mother Nature decided to whip out her gusts of freezing cold wind, thus ending the mild weather we've been having and reminding us that winter is going to kick our butts.
So I soothed myself with some French pastries: a torrone macarone and a canelé. I don't eat this way for breakfast every day—I swear.
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Posted by Erin Zimmer, September 16, 2009 at 2:30 PM
"Pastry chef and co-owner Nicholas Morgenstern really knows how to make a dessert—and make you want to eat it even when on the verge of popping."
[Photographs: Erin Zimmer]
General Greene
229 Dekalb Avenue, Brooklyn NY 11205 (near Clemont Avenue; map); 718-222-1510; thegeneralgreene.com
Service: Attentive, friendly
Setting: Homespun mom-and-poppy vibe with a tinge of barnyard
Compare It To: Char No. 4, Prime Meats, Buttermilk Channel
Must-Haves:Deviled eggs, 8-ounce grilled steak, salt and pepper ribs, salted caramel sundae, chocolate-chip cookies
Cost: $7 to $16 for sharable plates
Grade: B
General Greene is definitely listed in the mythical How To Open A Brooklyn Restaurant: 2008-2009 Edition that Carey described recently in her review of Rye in Williamsburg. Beer served in Mason jars? Check. Local, seasonal, and fatty foods? Check. Somewhere between a barnyard and Prohibition vibe? Mm-hmm.
But at this Brooklyn restaurant, the food, courtesy of recently installed chef Julie Farias, comes exclusively on small plates. Fatty cuisine in tapas form sounds intriguing—or maybe just sad. (Wait, where's the spilling-over platter of ribs?) The menu divides the dishes into “Cold” and “Hot” categories, in addition to bar snacks that include deviled eggs and a radish tower with anchovies. Yelpers seem extremely mixed on General Greene, ranging from "really tasty" to "huge disappointment!!" Whoa, two exclamation points? We had to check this out.
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Posted by Erin Zimmer, August 18, 2009 at 2:15 PM
Note: The 2009 Vendy Awards, a celebration of New York street food, will be held on September 26 at the Queens Museum of Art (buy tickets here). All proceeds will benefit the Street Vendor Project, an arm of the Urban Justice Center, advocating for the interests of New York street vendors. This year's five finalists will all be on hand to feed the crowds, the judges, and compete for the ultimate title in street food. Each day this week, we'll be profiling one of the finalists.
Pork and beef huarache
Fernando Martinez and his wife Jolanda spend their weekends patting down many a masa patty, so the world can eat more huaraches. These piles of Mexican goodness, the truck's specialty, are burrito-sized, but get folded up like a soft taco and wrapped in a paper plate to prevent drippage (which is pretty impossible to prevent, actually). On both Saturday and Sunday, they can be found at the Red Hook ballfields at the intersection of Clinton and Bay, and have a satellite branch at the Brooklyn Flea. Just look for the line that doesn't seem to be moving--with people in it that don't seem to care. Yeah, it's that good.
Beany huarache innards
The famous huaraches ($6) are what most people are waiting for (a typical line stretches to about a half-hour). Starting as oblong wads of masa, a thick dough made of dried corn, these huarache jackets puff up on the griddle, then get filled with a soft layer of beans, your choice of meat (pork is a big hit), shredded lettuce, and fresh guacamole--and don't forget the salsa station on the truck's "counterspace."
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