Luksus at Tørst

Luksus is the latest beachhead of the New Nordic invasion of New York, joining such standouts as Acme, Aska, Skál, and Atera. All are helmed by chefs who worked (even if only briefly) at the Danish restaurant Noma, No. 1 on the deeply flawed, but much watched, S. Pellegrino World’s Best Restaurants list.

The 26-seat restaurant is in the back room of Tørst (pictured above), an upscale beer hall in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. While you wait for your table, you can order one of 21 beers on draft (hundreds by the bottle), which are drawn from taps lined up against a marble wall, with wooden handles stained from light to dark, matching the colors of the drinks that come out of them.

The owner, Jeppe Jarnit-Bjergsø, has a love affair with beer: he serves no other alcoholic beverage, and the size of his cellar would make many a sommelier flush with envy. The taps are powered by a device called the flux capacitor (named for Doc Brown’s fictional contraption in the Back to the Future series), which can adjust the nitrogen and carbon dioxide mix of each tap, and maintain the beers at any of four different temperatures.

The pint-sized dining room seats just 26, six at a bar facing an open kitchen, and twenty at tiny tables more suited to a cocktail lounge. Finding room for beer bottles, glassware, and a cavalcade of artful plates, is a Rubik’s Cube puzzle that the servers solve adeptly, all evening long.

Chef Daniel Burns serves a frequently-changing tasting menu with no choices, which was $75 last July, but has since risen to $95 after a series of overwhelmingly positive reviews, including three stars from Adam Platt in New York. Curiously, the Times has not yet weighed in.

Both the plating style and the ingredients are instantly recognizable as New Nordic, with combinations of flavors not normally found together, such as lamb sweetbreads with hay gribiche, or a dessert of beetroot and licorice. Root vegetables and flowers are in starring roles, with smoked this or pickled that, Many of these experiments work. Some fail miserably.

Click to read more ...

Peter Luger Steakhouse

To write a review of Peter Luger Steakhouse seems absurd. All that’s worth saying has been said, right?

There’s only two ways this review can go, and you already know them. Either it’s the best steakhouse in the city, or it’s criminally overrated. Both views have ample support, from carnivores more knowledgeable than I.

Let me trianguate. It ain’t bad. I’d happily go again, if asked. But I wouldn’t recommend it either. The quality of New York steakhouses has risen markedly since Ruth Reichl awarded three stars in The Times in 1995. The city’s best porterhouses are no longer a Luger exclusive. If you want to traipse over the Williamsburg Bridge, to say you’ve done it, then go ahead. But you don’t have to. There is really no need.

Click to read more ...

Masal Café

There probably aren’t any Turkish restaurants in New York that have quite as much history as Masal Café, which occupies a third of the legendary Lundy’s space.

Lundy’s was a massive waterfront restaurant in Sheepshead Bay, built in the Spanish Mission-style with grand awnings and a clay-tile roof. Occupying two levels, it seated 2,400 to 2,800 guests (accounts vary). On a Mothers’s Day in the 1950s, it served 15,000 people.

My fiancée recalls that it was like Tavern on the Green, with crisp tablecloths and waiters in black tie, a place where people dressed up to go out. It probably wasn’t great—no establishment that large can be—but the former New York Times restaurant critic, Mimi Sheraton, fondly recalled the huckleberry pie and the Manhattan clam chowder.

Founded in 1934, it finally closed in 1977 after the founder, Irving Lundy, died. The building lay dormant for twenty years before Lundy’s re-opened under new ownership in 1997, at one-third the original size. The second life of Lundy’s got terrible reviews, and after floundering under multiple managements, closed for good in 2007. The remainder of the building was turned into an unsuccessful shopping mall called Lundy’s Landing.

In the meantime, the building was landmarked (so that its exterior couldn’t be altered), and zoned so that only restaurants could occupy it. The Cherry Hill Gourmet Market, a gorgeous, upscale gourmet supermarket that caters to the neighborhood’s predominantly Russian population, opened in the right-most section of the building (as viewed from the bay). You’d be elated if your neighborhood had a market like that. It got around the zoning requirement, although not without considerable controversy, by installing a “café,” though though some locals were still not satisfied.

The rest of the building is not so lovely. The aforementioned Masal Café and Lounge occupies the central one-third, although the old Lundy’s signage is still plainly evident, and under Landmark Commission rules, cannot be removed. The left-most third is abandoned, vacant and decaying.

Masal (“fairy tale” in Turkish) got its start when owner Selahattin Karakus opened a 200 square-foot Turkish food stand in the ill-fated shopping mall. As one of the few successful businesses there, he kept acquiring space as others moved out. He now has 4,000 square feet and 40 employees.

The building sustained significant damage during Hurricane Sandy. The supermarket threw out tons of food; Masal closed for several months, during which the kitchen was re-built, the floors redone, and all the dining room furniture had to be replaced. The ceiling was left unfinished, with ductwork exposed. A few ornately-tiled columns and a handful of light fixtures are the main Turkish influences in the design. There are low-slung tables with sofas and swivel chairs. Archival photos of Lundy’s in its heyday (well worth studying) cover every wall except the back of the dining room, which displays a massive, panoramic photo of Istanbul.

The restaurant is something like a Turkish Starbucks with a diner menu. Almost everything is under $10, with a heavy emphasis on salads and breakfast. There are almost 50 desserts (mostly Italian with a few Turkish specialties). They’re open till 2 am every day (3 am weekends, and 4 am in the summer), but alcohol isn’t served. According to Mr. Karakus, there’s a steady procession of regulars during the day, families in the early evening, and overflow from the nearby clubs in the late night hours. As far as we could tell (at 7 pm on a Sunday evening), most of the guests were speaking Russian, the predominant demographic of Sheepshead Bay these days.

We visited at the owner’s invitation and did not pay for our meal. The dishes we were served were primarily the house suggestion. Prices noted below are from the online menu.

There are several entrées referred to as “flat pies” with a yogurt sauce and four choices of filling: meat, potato, spinach, or cheese, all $6. The Meat Pie (above) was remarkably good, resembling a savory crèpe, with a very thin dough and spiced beef inside.

 

We had to try the Shepherd Salad ($8 or $12; above left), with tomatoes, green peppers, cucumbers, onions, dill, parsley, and a heavy dose of shredded feta cheese. Despite the memorable name, it struck us as an ordinary salad.

The Turkish-style Ravioli ($15; above right) are made with a light dough, almost like gnocchi, and stuffed with lamb. It wasn’t served quite warm enough, and we felt the pasta was overwhelmed with too much cream.

The only other entrée is the stuffed baked potato ($7.50; $1 extra for sausage or feta cheese), which we didn’t try, but appeared to be the most popular dish, as we saw one on almost every table.

 

The kitchen next sent out a cheese and vegetable platter (which I don’t see on the menu), but what we liked best was the fresh bread, which resembled a focaccia.

 

Of the desserts, our favorite was the oven-baked pudding ($5; above left), a light confection of sugar and egg. A mixed platter of Italian sweets (above right) was a mixed bag: a few were good, while several others were too syrupy for our taste.

Masal Café doesn’t serve destination cuisine, but it offered a fascinating snapshot of a neighborhood in transition. There are brightly-lit Soviet-style nightclubs down the street and the mansions of Manhattan Beach just across the bay. No restaurant resembling the old Lundy’s could work there today. But if only the remaining one-third of the old Lundy’s space could be brought back to life in another guise, the building could be the centerpiece of the neighborhood, as it once was.

Masal Café (1901 Emmons Ave. at Ocean Ave., Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn)

Aska

 

Note: Aska at Kinfolk Studios closed in early 2014. The restaurant re-opened in 2016 in a new location, still in Williamsburg. The new Aska has more space and more sensible hours, as it is no longer the subtenant of a gallery. The meal reviewed below was at the former location.

*

Earlier this year, the Modern Nordic restaurant sensation Frej (pronounced Fray) flew past New York like a comet. Open for just six months, it was a critical darling and food board sensation.

But what was it, exactly? A real restaurant, or just a pop-up? It served a $45 five-course tasting menu just three nights a week, Mondays through Wednesdays, in what seemed to be a makeshift space. (It was a noodle shop and a party space the other nights of the week, and a design studio by day.)

Reservations were taken only by email, a system as inefficient as it was disorganized. It took about a dozen messages, back and forth, over a month or more, for me to get a booking. Then Frej closed abruptly for a month of “renovations.” No one bothered to tell me my reservation wouldn’t be honored (though, fortunately, I was well aware of it anyway).

In New York, “closed for renovations” often means “closed for good,” and that was the case here. A month morphed into nearly four, before the space re-opened as Aska. The part-time ramen shop is gone. The tasting menu (now $65 for ten incredible courses) is now served five nights a week (Sunday to Thursday). The bar, with a short à la carte menu, is open seven days a week. It’s still in the Kinfolk Design Studio, doubling as a coffee shop by day. Reservations are taken online—a far more civilized way of handling it.

Fredrik Berselius, one of the two original Frej chefs, runs the kitchen. (The other, Richard Kuo, is now at Pearl & Ash on the Bowery.) Joining Berselius is GM and cocktail/wine guru Eamon Rockey, formerly of Eleven Madison Park, Compose, and Atera.

The deep, narrow space looks similar to the photos I’ve seen of Frej. Some of the artwork has been removed, making it feel even more austere than before. Housed in the back of a renovated garage, there are just seven tables, seating a mere 18 guests. There’s an partly-open kitchen, a bar, and in the front a cocktail lounge.

I don’t know if the heating system is unreliable, but when the hostess seated us, she offered blankets, should we need them. We did not come anywhere close to taking her up on it.

The staff paces the reservations book at leisurely intervals. Just our table was seated at 6:00 pm on a Sunday; then the second at 6:30, the third at 7:00, the fourth at 7:15, the fifth at 8:15, the sixth and seventh at 8:30. This is obviously a deliberate strategy, as when I reserved, only the 6:00 and 7:00 times were available.

Serious Eats had a preview of the cocktail program: “No one could ever accuse Eamon Rockey…of not being a patient man. Of the eight signature cocktails he’s created for the just-opened modern Scandinavian concept, not one is without an ingredient that requires some sort of time-consuming infusion, fermentation, or extraction process.”

I tried two excellent examples: the US Export (“whiskies of all sorts, pear, maple, angostura”) and the Next of Kin (“aquavit, pu-erh combucha, caraway”), both excellent, and at $12 well below the going rate. Full disclosure: Rockey recogonized me, and the cocktails were comped.

(There’s a photo of the cocktail and beer list near the top of this post; click on the image for a larger view.)

There’s an international wine list that runs to two pages, with separate sections dedicated to Riseling and Beaujolais, both of which Rockey feels pair particularly well with the food. We took his advice, ordering a 2005 Beaujolais.

The food is in the same austere, Modern Nordic style as the décor. The staff handed us a menu at the end of the meal, wrapped up as if it were a parchment scroll. (Click on the photo, above left.) However, that menu lists just seven courses. Counting various amuses, it was more like ten, or eleven if you count the bread.

Most dishes come with fairly elaborate descriptions from the server. If “pork chop, carrots, and mashed potatoes” is as much of an explanation as you want, Aska is not the place for you. Platings are elaborate, each its own modern art sculpture. Some of them are gone after just a bite or two. A hearty eater might still be hungry afterward—though we weren’t.

The chef can write a symphony with root vegetables. But at $65, some compromises are inevitable. You won’t find caviar, Wagyu beef, foie gras, lobster, white truffles, or other luxury ingredients. The protein courses are the menu’s weak spot. If Aska is a hit (and after less than a month in business, it’s well on its way), look for the price to go up, along with the quality of the ingredients.

The bread service (above right) consisted of warm, sweet caraway rolls and salty, crisp flatbread (like a thin pretzel), with a splash of soft butter hugging the upper left edge of the bowl.

 

The first amuse (above left) was a chip of crispy pike skin with sour cream, and a disc of shortbread with cheese and juniper. The second (above right) was an inner tube-shaped helping of pig skin with jam (6:00 position), a chip of dehydrated pig’s blood (2:00), and a buckthorn.

(Despite the “ick” factor, the pig’s blood chip did not taste like blood at all.)

 

We moved onto the first of the courses listed in the printed menu, smoked and dried shrimp (above left) with cucumber and rapeseed oil, which had a rich, salty flavor. A warm stalk of broccoli (above right) stood straight up, resting in a bath of mussel emulsion and seaweed dust. The note I took at the time, was: “Wow!”

 

A course described as “Potato” (above left) was something more elaborate, a stew of potato, onion, and mackerel, with a warm milk foam poured by the chef at tableside. To go with it, the owner poured a glass of potent milk punch made with aquavit.

Squid (above right) with purslane and turnips was our first dud: rubbery, bitter, and flavorless.

 

We adored the Salsify (above left), with celery root, wild greens, and lichens. “This is too good to be just vegetables,” my girlfriend said.

But Pork Shank (above right) with sunchokes was another dud, a one-note dish not rescued by a helping of apple cider poured tableside.

 

The palate cleanser (not listed on the printed menu) was a half-scoop of Whey Sorbet (above left) with oak chip and French sorrel. Dessert (above right) was an excellent cardamom ice cream with brown butter mousse and hazelnuts.

The service was as good as at any three-star restaurant. With four servers for seven tables, nothing went unnoticed. Clean plates and empty glasses were noticed almost instantly.

Aska is just three weeks old, so there are no professional reviews yet, but the basic idea is similar to Frej, which was a big hit. This is surely the best $65 meal in town, but I’ll bet it hits $95 within two years. If Fredrik Berselius can keep cooking like this, it’ll be well worth it.

Aska (90 Wythe Avenue at N. 11th Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn)

Food: Austere Modern Nordic, most of it stunning and flavorful
Service: As attentive and helpful as at any three-star restaurant
Ambiance: A renovated garage, comfortable but as austere as the food

Rating: ★★★
Why? There is nothing else like this in New York. By all means go. 

Isa

 

Note: While I was composing this review, Eater posted that owner Taavo Somer had fired the whole kitchen staff at Isa. The former sous chef tweeted that they’re “Turning something special into another grilling, burger, pizza joint.” There was no sign anything was amiss when we dined there on Friday, but by this morning the restaurant was temporarily closed.

Anyhow: the review is nearly done, so here it is: an ode to the Isa that was.

*

If it seems that every restaurant these days is a copy of something else you’ve seen, I have a one-word retort: Isa. By turns wonderful and strange, it is the most remarkable restaurant I have visited in quite a while.

You’ll note I didn’t say best. Some of the food we tried didn’t quite hit the mark. But enough of it did, and none really resembled anything we’ve seen. Isa is special.

I’d love to go back, but it is quite the hike, about fifteen minutes’ walk from either of two Williamsburg subway stations (Marcy Avenue on the J/M/Z, or Bedford Avenue on the L). At least it takes reservations, unlike most of Brooklyn. Most nights, you can get in before 8pm without much trouble.

Isa (Estonian for “father”) is the brainchild of Taavo Somer, the design guru behind the restaurants Freemans and Peels, and the dive bar, The Rusty Knot, all in Manhattan.

“They must have chopped down a forest to build this place,” my girlfriend said. There’s wood everywhere, but it is all very comforting, welcoming, and stylish. We dined in the sun-drenched room on the corner lot at Wyeth and S. 2nd Street. Next door is an open kitchen with a wood-burning brick oven.

The chef, Ignacio Mattos, comes from Uruguay via the Italian restaurant Il Buco, where he was executive chef for five years. But he’s doing something completely different here, in a style that has been called “Primitive Modern,” with some apologies to the so-called New Nordic style seen at places like Acme and Frej.

The chef sat for a lengthy interview with Eater, and after reading it you’re still not sure what he is trying to do.

The menu, which changes frequently, is the model of economy, with nine starters and snacks ($7–17), two entrées ($28–29), and two desserts ($11). A three-course prix fixe is $55. If you order à la carte, bread (above left) costs $4 extra, but you should have some. Baked in house, it’s some of the best restaurant bread I’ve had in a while, and the butter is so soft it could be cream.

The menus themselves are so artistic that it’s worth reproducing them in full:

 

And the drinks menu too:

 

Don’t look for those menus on the website, isa.gg, the most useless restaurant website I’ve seen. The “.gg” top-level domain corresponds to Guernsey. What that has to do with Isa is beyond me.

 

We ordered à la carte. A salad ($14; above left) was a triumph of plating, with the ingredients arranged like a house of cards. Salads are often boring, but this one was pretty good, with peach, fennel, mulberry, and almond vinaigrette.

Pig tails ($10; above right) couldn’t have been more opposite, a symphony of cartilege and fat slathered in caramel. An appetizer is about as much of it as anyone could tolerate, but it really needs to come with warm towlettes, as it’s not a knife-and-fork type of dish.

 

The photo doesn’t give a good view of the Hanger Steak ($29; above left): there’s more of it than you can see. The steak itself was just fine, but nothing special. The interest chiefly came from a potato and marrow soup served inside a hollowed-out onion. At least, that’s what I thought it was.

I wouldn’t order the Mackeral again ($28; above right). There’s a decent amount of fish there, beneath little turnip discs, but it had a rather leaden flavor, partly redeemed by the slightest hint of smoke.

*

Well, given the news at the top of this post, that’s all she wrote for Isa, an intriguing if not-quite-perfect restaurant that seemed to have so much potential.

Isa (348 Wyeth Avenue at South Second Street, Williamsburg)

Lamb Dinner at Roberta’s

Until a few weeks ago, I figured I’d never make it to Roberta’s, Bushwick’s little pizzeria that could. Sam Sifton gave it two stars, and everything I’d read suggested he was right.

But Roberta’s had conditions I was unwilling to live with: a trip to a neighborhood where there is nothing else of interest to me, for a likely one to two-hour wait at most normal times. Reservations are accepted only for an acclaimed tasting menu (served on uncomfortable benches) that’s offered to just eight people a week.

I was eager, but not that eager.

Then Roberta’s launched a series of theme dinners, one per month over the summer, starting with lamb. Served in the outdoor garden, these are open to about 35 people, with tickets sold online. (Click on the image for a larger copy of the menu.)

Just like a concert, you’ve got to be really sure you can make the date, but the price was remarkable: $95 per person including service, tax and tip, for five courses plus paired wines.

I’ll cut to the chase: the food and service were exceptional for the price. I still wouldn’t trundle out here without a reservation. With one, it was a most enjoyable evening.

We arrived a bit early and had drinks in the outdoor Tiki Bar (above).

The outdoor garden (above left) is a post-industrial junkyard, scattered with planters (above right). You’re led to believe that the chef is growing his own produce, but is he? Given the volume at Roberta’s, could such a small garden really supply much more than just a minimal amount of what they consume?

It poured for most of the day. Had the weather not cleared up, dinner would have moved inside to Blanca, the new event space next door, which could be the sign of where Roberta’s is headed. There’s a restroom in there with a fancy heated toilet seat, and a sleek, modern kitchen, and counter seating on plush bar stools. It’s everything the original Roberta’s is not.

I asked about the use of that space. “It’s all part of the Roberta’s empire,” a server said.

Anyhow, the rain abated, so they stuck to the original plan. Dinner was served in an outdoor tent, with two long tables, wooden benches, and burlap taking the place of placemats. Chef de cuisine Max Sussman (above left) cooked in an outdoor oven while legs of lamb twirled on a spit, and another cook worked in a smaller tent nearby (above right).

The food was all very good. We started with Pea Soup (above right) with morels and sunflower oil.

Then came breaded Lamb’s Tongue (above left) with watercress, locust flower, and capra sarda (a goat cheese) and a Garden Salad (above right) with aged gouda, radish, and snap peas.

Lamb Shank (above left) with yogurt and pickled ramps was a bit of a letdown. But Leg of Lamb (above right), served family-style, had a rich, smokey flavor imparted from the roasting spit, with roasted poatoes, broccoli rabe, and garlic flatbread (below left).

Dessert, a cucumber mint gelato (above right) was just fine, but seemed phoned in.

The beverages included five wines of the sort you might choose for a summer patio dinner: none great, but all good enough for the occasion. For the price I cannot complain, especially as the pours were unlimited.

This wasn’t a typical Roberta’s dinner, but it certainly conveyed a feel for what all the fuss has been about. The food and service were great, but dinner ended past 10:00pm, and the subway ride home took an hour and a half.

“Next time, we need to order a car service,” my girlfriend said.

Roberta’s (261 Moore Street, Bushwick, Brooklyn)

Food: Rustic Italian-American cuisine
Service: Not fancy, but attentive
Ambiance: A post-industrial junkyard

Rating: ★★
Why? It’s a pain to get here, but there’s nothing quite like it in New York

Brooklyn Winery

We usually plan our meals with some deliberation—old-fashioned, I know. But our visit to Brooklyn Winery recently was entirely impromptu and thoroughly worthwhile.

The space is right out of the Williamsburg playbook:

The wine bar is designed predominantly from reclaimed materials, including a decorative wall made from barn wood, World War II ammo boxes standing in as wine racks, vintage industrial lighting, and beautiful 1940s wallpaper. The bar itself is clad in wood reclaimed from church pews, and topped with zinc.

It’s splendidly renovated, with an attractive bar, communal tables, a garden, and upstairs several secluded rooms with coffee tables and comfy sofas. Next door is a small-batch winery. They’ll eventually be sold on tap at the bar, and I believe for purchase to take home by the bottle.

There are about 35 wines by the glass ($8–15), an eccentric international list that’ll take you off the beaten path. We were headed elsewhere afterward, but enjoyed a glass of the Grüet Brut Rosé from Albuquerque, NM. Next time, we’ll need to stay longer.

The food menu offers a variety of antipasti ($3–5), more substantial appetizers or small entrées ($7–15), and desserts ($7–8). A really good Duck, Pistachio, and Dried Cherry Pâté with crisp bread (right), which two could easily share, was just $5.

You can’t miss Brooklyn Winery. Although it’s on a side street, the name of the establishment is painted in big block letters on the side of the building, visible from Driggs Avenue. It’s a cliché to write about the unpretentious wine bar—do they ever claim to be anything else?—but on a brief look, Brooklyn Winery seemed to be the real thing.

Brooklyn Winery (213 N. 8th St. between Driggs Ave & Roebling St, Williamsburg)

Food: The kind of snacks you want with wine
Wine: 35 wines by the bottle/glass, inexpensive and off-the-beaten-path
Service: Good
Ambiance: The same distressed chic you find on every block but well done

Rating: ★
Why? The good selection of inexpensive, unusual wines

My Moon

My Moon is a big-box restaurant that feels like it belongs in Hell’s Kitchen, rather than in Williamsburg, where most dining is on a much smaller scale.

There’s a large outdoor garden, leading to a converted brick-clad factory dominated by soaring double-height ceilings. There are booths on either side of the room, with strange curved walls, tilted at an angle that envelops you.

Do the crowds ever flock to this place? At 7:30pm on a Friday evening, we were practically the first to be seated. By the time we left, past 9:00pm, it was a bit busier but nowhere near full.

What opened in 2007 as a Turkish restaurant is now Spanish. The new chef, Ivan Vilches, claims to be an “El Bulli protégé.”

“We’re currently playing with smoke,” he told The Brooklyn Paper. “We smoke a sea bass carpaccio on oak in front of our customers… The waiter lifts the crystal bell that covers it, and the smoke billows out. It’s a lot of fun.”

We saw that dish come out at another table. It does indeed make a striking impression, at least visually. Alas, nothing we ordered—nor saw at any other table—was as interesting. Did we order wrong?

On the menu, there’s a long list of tapas (mostly $5–9), appetizers ($9–19), entrées ($19–25) and side dishes ($4–6). The server pushed boatloads of food, leaving us unsure how much to order. We’d had a snack elsewhere, so we decided to start with six tapas, and see how that went.

One tapa never appeared, which is just as well. The food wasn’t impressive, and I wasn’t dying to have any more of it.

Bread (resembling focaccia) came out warm. Wrapped dates ($6; above right) with almonds and bacon didn’t have much flavor.

The next two courses were the best. Grilled Squid ($7; above left) with parsley and garlic oil was on the bland side, but well prepared. Garlic Shrimp ($7; above right) had a strong, spicy kick.

The so-called Bomba Meatball ($6; above left) was bizarre, consisting of more potato than meat. A Peas and Bacon appetizer ($16; above right) was too salty, and flecked with ham that was too tough.

The wine list offers about two dozen bottles, most priced from $30–45, though selected without much apparent rhyme or reason from France, Argentina, Spain, and California. But I would sooner re-order the Luzón Crianza 2008 from Spain ($40) than re-try the forgettable food.

If you get one of the booths, this isn’t a bad spot to hang out and drink. In one corner of the large dining room, a DJ keeps the music going, but if it’s not my cup of tea, at least it’s not too loud. After we were seated, the server clearly hadn’t cottoned to the fact that we wanted to take our time: it seemed like he was circling back every 3½ minutes.

In all fairness to the new chef, he has been at My Moon for only a short time. Perhaps his best work is yet to come. But if he’s taking the cuisine in a more experimental direction, I’m not sure the big-box space lends itself to the project.

My Moon (184 N. 10th St. between Driggs & Bedford Ave., Williamsburg)

Food: Modern Spanish
Service: Perhaps we didn’t get the best server
Ambiance: Distressed industrial chic on a large scale

Rating: Not recommended
Why? After five years, this restaurant hasn’t found its soul

Le Comptoir

Note: Le Comptoir closed in June 2013 due to a dispute with their landlord.

*

The dining revolution in Williamsburg has largely passed me by, though I am hoping over time to rectify that.

I am not sure how revolutionary it really is, when so many places seem interchangeable—from a design standpoint, at any rate. I think the last ten Williamsburg restaurants I’ve read about could borrow the space at Le Comptoir with no change of décor. It’s as if the whole neighborhood was designed by the same firm.

The food is another story. The cuisine at Le Comptoir is rustic French, an under-represented genre in Brooklyn. No one seemed to care whether it looked French, but the food is pretty good for the price.

I’ve misplaced my receipt, but I recall a brief and somewhat over-priced wine list, which partially offsets the inexpensive menu, organized by food groups (poissons, legumes, viandes, charcuteries & fromages), instead of the usual appetizers and entrées. Nothing is over $20, except for a New York Strip steak ($29).

 

Bearing that in mind, we were quite pleased with Herb Crusted Tuna ($15; above left) with baby arugula & almond toasted pesto and white bean hummus; Pan Seared Scallops ($15; above right) with a parsnip purée and bbq reduction; and a large helping of Brussels Sprouts ($8; below left) with parmesan, balsamic, and brioche croutons.

 

That wasn’t quite enough, so we finished with the cheese board ($14; above right).

The restaurant wasn’t at all busy on a Sunday evening. We were seated at a large booth facing the open kitchen. I’m not sure if the menu changes often enough to sustain interest over repeated visits. Otherwise, it’s the sort of place I’d visit all the time, if I lived nearby.

Le Comptoir (21 Grand St. between Roebling St. & Driggs Ave., Williamsburg)

Food: Rustic, casual French
Service: Just fine; unremarkable
Ambiance: Distressed chic, like seemingly everything else in Williamsburg

Rating: ★
Why? Good, competent food at a very good price

Maison Premiere

 

Maison Premiere, which opened in 2011, is a wonderful cocktails-and-shellfish bar in Williamsburg, cleverly designed—like so much in the borough—to look a lot older than it really is.

Of course, like so many Williamsburg storefronts, it’s repurposed from earlier, grittier times. You’re never quite sure what was always there, and what was brought in merely to look distressed.

The exterior is barely labeled and unassuming, like a lot cocktail spots these days. Even knowing the address and cross-street, I walked right by it, at first.

Then you walk in and see this gorgeous old-fashioned marble-topped bar with antique taps, backed by ceiling-height shelves stocked with spirits.

The theme is New Orleans, with almost 30 kinds of absinthe and a variety of cocktails featuring it. You don’t like absinthe? There’s an impressive array of bourbons, rums, whiskies, grappa, bitters, fortified wines, juleps, and so forth. Cocktails are skillfully done, running $9–13, generally a few dollars less than comparable fare in Manhattan. There’s a handful of wines, which are beside the point.

The food menu consists almost entirely of chilled shellfish, including 33 species of oysters—the most I recall anywhere in the city. There’s also chilled clams, crabs, lobster, an arctic char ceviche, and two kinds of gumbo. Seafood platters are $35, $80, or $140. We had the smallest of these to go with our cocktails: a half-lobster, shrimp, clams, and two kinds of oysters.

The place is so nice that you wish there were hot entrées to complement all of that shellfish, but in the niche they’ve chosen to occupy, the variety is remarkable. There’s no question it’s a hit with the neighborhood. Even at 5:00pm on a Sunday, it was about half full. I imagine that it gets swamped later on. In addition to the bar, there are tables in the back, and an outdoor garden in good weather.

Maison Premiere might be one of those rare bars that is worth a trip in its own right. It’s certainly worthwhile for a stop before dinner (as it was for us) or to relax after it.

Maison Premiere (298 Bedford Ave. between South First & Grand St., Williamsburg)

Food: Cold shellfish exclusively, but an impressive variety
Spirits: A broad range of domestic absinthes, rums, and whiskies
Service: Courteous, but a bit slow
Ambiance: A page out of old New Orleans

Rating: ★★
Why? For the wide variety of oysters and the absinthe-based cocktails