Wednesday Food & Drink Round-Up

A Peek Inside Trader Joe’s
The Brooklyn Paper has posted a video tour of the new TJ’s on Court and Atlantic — documenting proof of the the store’s 18 cash registers. Plus, the store’s captain, Greg Glei, and BP editor-in-chief Gersh Kuntzman discuss their favorite Trader Joe’s products, such as white cheddar popcorn, mandarin orange chicken (a $5 meal in a freezer bag — just add rice and broccoli), cheese, chocolate, and coffee from around the world, and frozen blackened salmon. Any other product recommendations for those of us who are new to TJ’s?

New Brunch Options in Cobble Hill & Carroll Gardens
A Brooklyn Life says the weekend brunch menu at Smith Street’s new bourbon and barbecue joint, Char No. 4, is “chockfull of comfort foods — bacon cheddar grits, shrimp and grits, a BLT made from fried pork bely, a chopped pork sandwich.” Plus, Abilene, the bar on Court and 3rd Place is gearing up to add a brunch menu — “And it’s not an extension of their current chicken fingers and burger menu. Nope, this brunch will be courtesy of the folks behind the southern-leaning Jimmy’s Diner in Williamsburg/Greenpoint… and [will] hopefully include Jimmy’s ‘famous’ free donuts.”

After the Jump: House of Pizza & Calzone’s new (and improved?) look, a Q&A with Tyler Kord of Fort Greene’s No. 7, and Bruni hits up Marlow & Sons…

Photo by Lost City

House of Pizza and Calzone’s New Look: Hot or Not?
Lost City is into the new signage: “Over a coat of chocolate-brown paint applied directly to the building’s old brickface, has been painted, in cream-colored letters, ‘The Famous House of Pizza & Calzone.’ … I know a lot of criticisms can be made against this approach: that it trucks in faux nostalgia, is precious and chases after the bourgeois crowd. But just think of the other ways they could have gone…”

Chef Tyler Kord Describes No. 7’s Cuisine
7 Greene Avenue (at Fulton Street), Fort Greene
“I kind of just wrote the menu and cooked what I felt like, and it unintentionally veered toward Eastern Europe at one end and Asian/Korean at the other. I didn’t set out to open a Hungarian/Korean fusion restaurant — but I’m moving in that direction now.” [Brooklyn Based]

Frank Bruni on Marlow & Sons
81 Broadway, Williamburg
“Chicken cooked under a brick ($20), monkfish ($24), a chocolate tart ($8) — all of these were well prepared and satisfying, though there didn’t seem to be all that much of a price break for the cramped environs and the zip code. So goes the neighborhood, from the edge to the mainstream.” [NY Times/Diner’s Journal]