Brooklyn Food & Drink Round-Up
Lucali Closed Due to Fire 575 Henry Street, Carroll Gardens; (718) 858-4086 Looks like Lucali is going to be closed for the next week or two due to a fire. Slice reports, “the fire started in the flue from the oven to the roof… [Owner Mark] Iacono says it may take as little as 3…
Lucali Closed Due to Fire
575 Henry Street, Carroll Gardens; (718) 858-4086
Looks like Lucali is going to be closed for the next week or two due to a fire. Slice reports, “the fire started in the flue from the oven to the roof… [Owner Mark] Iacono says it may take as little as 3 to 4 days to install a new flue, but he’ll probably keep the pizzeria closed for one to two weeks to … drum roll, please … set up the long-awaited garden space. Every cloud has a silver lining, no?”
Is Smith Street’s Future Bleak?
India Ennis, owned of the recently closed Panino’teca, shared her thoughts on the future of restaurant-saturated Smith Street with Grub Street: Business brings business, and that’s good for the neighborhood. Then we hit a wall and there were way, way too many restaurants… It’s going to cycle again. They’re going to open up and a lot of those places are going to be closed in the next year.” Grub Street also says that “Ennis tentatively refers to the next incarnation [of the old Panino’teca space] as a sports bar, but only because the new operators said ‘they were going to put in a bunch more fryers and a bunch of TVs.’
Quick Bites
Di Fara is cutting hours and raising prices, says Grub Street… A super cheap produce spot just opened in “a small building on Kent Ave just south of Myrtle,” says Clinton Hill Blog… This may be the last summer for NYC ICY on Church Avenue — “a washed-out June and a freezer failure that cost them thousands,” says Ditmas Park Blog… And Eat It: The Brooklyn Food Blog hits Williamsburg raw foods newcomer Rockin’ Raw.
After the jump: Kitchen takeovers in Brooklyn and more praise for Oaxaca on Smith Street…
Kitchen Takeovers
The Times ran a story today about chefs who take over bar or cafe kitchens in Brooklyn on a weekly basis. Thursday through Saturday nights, An Nguyen Xuan opens Bep, serving Vietnamese food out of Simple Café (346 Bedford Avenue at South Third Street, Williamsburg). On Tuesdays, Trophy Bar (351 Broadway at Keap Street, Williamsburg) becomes home to AsiaDog, serving hot dogs with “audacious toppings” — which are also available on Saturdays at the Brooklyn Flea. And Beer Table (427B Seventh Avenue at 15th Street, Park Slope) just got a new chef to handle their Tuesday night prix fixe dinners. Has anyone been to any of these places for these weekly meals?
More Praise for Oaxaca
251 Smith St (between Douglass St & Degraw St)
I Heart Tacos gives Smith Street’s newest taco joint a rating of 4 (out of 5) sombreros: “Each taco is topped with cilantro, onions, tomatoes, green sauce, pickled red onions (yes!), and queso fresco… First thing I dive into is the shrimp taco. The shrimp is cooked perfectly. The sauce (some kind of garlicky chipotle sauce) is amazing, a little spicy and it’s topped with all the good stuff… I could probably eat 3 or 4 of these guys.”
i never ate at panino’teca but i can tell you that the renovations the new owners are making to that space looks a million times better.
$5 for a slice of pizza is retarded.
$5 a slice at DiFara? Raising prices during a recession is pretty ballsy.
Panino’teca a ‘pioneer’? u gotta be kidding. Lots of restaurants before that one. Never sure what it was anyway.
Any word on when Black Horse Pub at 5th Ave. & 16th Street will open?
I have to disagree that the loss of Panino’teca is a loss at all. It may have been a restaurant at the beginning, but quickly turned into another bar with a garden. If they had actually focused on food and not competing with the Zombie Hut next door, they might have made it. My sense is that the India had no idea how to run a restaurant (or a business), however “nice” she may have been.
Wow, I just saw the usual crowd at Lucali’s last night, so I guess it happened last night. Garden great, but I bet it will just increase the traffic like more lanes on a highway. But still nice.
There are still good places on Smith…Po, Saul, Grocery, Chestnut, Char 4, Robin des Bois.
Panino’teca was fine, but the new crop of restaurants on Smith are a step up, in my opinion.
That is such a bummer about Panino’teca. I loved that place, and they had a great garden. It was one of the pioneering restaurants on Smith and they were always very friendly and the food was very good and reasonable. All the good places on Smith are gone. I guess that’s the thanks you get for being a pioneer.