Five Points Visited 10/29/10 3.5 Forks

Five Points 31 Great Jones St (between Lafayette St & Bowery), New York, NY 10012

 Five Points is mostly well known of its brunch and happy hour specials, but Lav and I decided to try it out for dinner.  But since we got there in time for happy hour, we decided to indulge ourselves in $5 martinis.  We both got peach martinis, which were incredibly strong for $5.  Now I know why they limit 2 per customer.  I remember they used to have $1 oysters for happy hour too, but I didn't see it on the menu. 


The host told us that although there was no one eating when we got there (6pm on a Friday) that we should eat early because it was going to be a packed house.  When we finally did sit down at around 6:30, you could definitely see it starting to get full.  The clientele there does skew a bit on the old side, so I guess for them eating at 6:30 isn't too early.  The first thing I noticed about the restaurant was how dark it was. I guess they were going for a fall motif since it was orange lighting, but after a martini and a few glasses of wine, it was definitely making me sleepy.  Lav and I were going to start with the mushroom appetizer, but the waiter mentioned that they had a blue cheese plate special, so we decided to go with that.  I ordered the swordfish ($24) and Lav got the potato pizza ($15).  Normally, I love cheese plates, but when it's just one cheese, I started to get sick of it (not to mention that Lav doesn't like blue cheese, but I was ok with that when we ordered it since I don't like dates and she ate those).  The cheese did come with this great apple spread that I really liked, but there wasn't enough bread or bread-like products to eat the cheese with. 


Next our entrees came out and while they were both good I don't think either of us were falling over amazed with them.  Swordfish generally isn't my favorite fish as it tends to be a bit tougher and get be dry if not cooked properly.  But the fish was cooked just right and was quite filling.  This was a fairly large piece and it came in a smokey red sauce with a few mussels as garnish which was a nice touch.  I didn't taste Lav's pizza but it was thinly sliced yukon potatoes with truffle oil and it was huge and smelled great (how can it not when there's truffle oil involved?)   If I ever go back, I would say that a couple could split 1 pizza and just get some appetizers.   For dessert, we got the brownie sundae ($8) which came with espresso ice cream and homemade whip cream.  Strangely enough Lav didn't really like it even though she's the chocolate lover and I did like it.  I am a sucker for homemade whip cream and it tasted really good with the ice cream.  The brownies were actually small pieces instead of large pieces which made it more palatable for me to eat.  They were a bit dry but if you mixed it with the ice cream and whip cream, it tasted fine. 


Our total bill with a carafe of red wine ($18) was $81 pre-tip but with the 30% BBE discount it came out to be $39/pp with tip and tax.  I will say that I was very impressed with the service there and would come back to try brunch.