BrisketTown Visited 11/16/2012 3.5 Forks

BrisketTown 359 Bedford Ave., (between 5th St & 4th St), Brooklyn, NY 11211

I was totally expecting to be wow'd by BrisketTown and to have it dethrone Fette Sau as my favorite BBQ place in Williamsburg.  It has been talked up to rave reviews in many of my favorite food blogs such as the New York Times, Eater, Gothamist, and Grub Street.  Even though I usually don't like to go to restaurants the first couple months of opening (they almost always need some time to work out the kinks), I just couldn't resist a new BBQ and had to go the first night it opened. 

Cicily and I met up at 6:30 right when they open up the line to non-pre-orders.  Over the summer, you were able to reserve your meat on line and then come into the restaurant to claim your meat.  Otherwise, the restaurant opens at 6pm and then is only open until when they run out of meat.  I was a bit worried that if we didn't get there early, we would be shut out but luckily it looks like they had enough meat that night until at least 9 or 10pm.  The restaurant is super super small, maybe about 8 or 9 tables max.  You walk up to the counter and there is basically one thing on the menu: brisket.  There are 2 cuts, either lean or fatty.  It's $25/lb and the super nice owner, Daniel, told us that for 2 people, he recommended about 1/3 to 1/2 a pound per person.  We decided to go for a mix of lean and fatty and got 1 lb total.  The only other things they serve there are potato salad ($4) and coleslaw ($4).  We went for the potato salad and a few slices of Texas white bread.  Now the issue with the seat yourself style of restaurants is that sometimes you can get your food and find that there is no where to sit.  I literally jumped on top of a group of people as they were leaving their seat.  Not my ideal way to enjoy a meal but when it comes to BBQ by the pound, it usually is easier to order yourself.  The food looked great and I was super excited to cut into it.  One problem.  There were no knives in the place.  Only plastic forks.  I ended up pulling most of the meat apart with my hands, which was fine, but a knife and some wet naps would have gone a long way here.  People around us were raving about the meat (the guy in front of us in line was already in line for 2nds) so I was ready to tear into it.  And you know what? It was good but my mind and stomach didn't explode from joy.  The lean meat was indeed lean and the fatty meat fatty (almost a bit too fatty - and not in the good kind of pork belly fatty) but the outside of the brisket had too much black pepper flavor for me - it was very in your face.  And while I know this may be sacrilege, I wanted some BBQ sauce to go with it.  It just seemed to be missing something that I couldn't put my finger on and I think it was the sauce.  While I appreciate that the pace was focused on one kind of meat that they did well, the reason I love Fette Sau is because not only can you get brisket but you can get ribs, pork belly, sausage and all kind of other delicious meats at the same time.  As they say, variety is the spice of life.  As for the potato salad, it was a nice side dish to help cut some of the meatiness of the main entree.  And the 1/2 lb per person was the perfect amount of food for 2 people as I was definitely more than full when we left.

For now the restaurant is BYOB which actually isn't so bad but it is nice to have some whiskey with your meat and it's a bit hard to go down to your local deli and buy a small size of whiskey.  So we opted for wine but a lot of people brought their own tall boys or 6 packs.  I will say that the waitstaff there was awesome (shout out to Alex for helping us in a wine bind) and really friendly.  Location-wise, it's a bit out of the way (it's in South Williamsburg - which I know is the new hot spot of Brooklyn so I guess it does make sense to be where all the action is these days).   Even though I thought the meat was good, I just didn't have the come to jesus moment I was expecting based on all the reviews.  But if you're a BBQ freak like me, I do think it's worth a try at least once.  To quote Cicily "It's good but I wouldn't go out of my way to come back here".  Knowing that Fette Sau is so much closer, I would tend to agree.  Total bill: $42.

Photo Credit: Free Williamsburg

Tue Thai Visited 11/9/2012 3.5 Forks

Tue Thai 3 Greenwich Ave., (between 10th St & Christopher St), New York, NY 10014

I have been to tons of restaurants near Greenwich Ave such as  Rosemary's, Whitehall, and Kingswood, yet have never noticed Tue Thai.  The reason is that there are no windows to the place.  There's a glass door but then the rest of it has this wood paneling that prevents you from seeing inside the restaurant.  They could get so much more business if they installed some giant windows so that people can see inside (and vice versa).   If Allison hadn't been there before, I would have walked right past it.

We walked in at 6:30pm on a Friday and it was completely empty.  But slowly the restaurant did start to fill up as we were eating and by the time we left it was pretty packed.  The menu here is pretty standard mom and pop Thai food with pad thai, pad see ew, fried rice, curries, and sautees.  While I do love fancy, high end food, there's something really comforting about a good pad thai or fried rice dish.  Allison and I split the grilled calamari ($7), papaya salad ($7), and the shrimp pad thai ($13) and since it was a bit cold I also got a wonton soup ($5) for myself.  The grilled calamari came out first and it reminded me how much I prefer a good grilled calamari dish to a fried one that you get a lot of bars.  This one was marinated and grilled with Asian spices and served with a spicy cilantro fish sauce and a mild sirracha.  It was a pretty tasty dish and it was a great starter dish.  It really makes me never want to eat a greasy calamari dish again.  Next came mine wonton soup and this came with 3 fairly large homemade chicken and shrimp wontons in a clear broth and bok choy.  It was a a good basic clear soup but they didn't cut up the bok choy which made it difficult to eat.  It would have been better if they had made them smaller and not so bulky to chew.  Next they brought out the pad thai and papaya salad.  The pad thai was nice and saucy and had great flavor.  It really hit the spot.  Meanwhile the papaya salad was a good standard salad served with cherry tomatoes, peanuts, and string bean with a lime juice dressing.  It could have used a bit more heat to it but overall all the components were fresh and just right.

All in all, this was a good non frills Thai place in the West Village.   I don't mean to make the place sound bare bones because it's not but given it's location it's definitely not super trendy either.  But the best part of the meal was that Allison had a Groupon for the place and the total bill with tip was only $10!  I usually am not a huge fan of restaurants that participate in Groupon but I gotta say that this deal actually did what its supposed to do for a restaurant.  Meaning, it introduced me to a new restaurant that I ordinarily wouldn't go to but now that I've tried it, I would come back again.

Photo Credit: Yelp 

Flying Saucer Visited 11/5/2012 3 Forks

Flying Saucer 1123 N California Ave., (between Thomas St & Haddon Ave), Chicago, IL 60622

Flying Saucer was another hippie-dippie type of brunch place in Chicago that Deanna and I decided to try right before my flight took off.  Unlike Victory's Banner, this one isn't run by "devotees" but instead only had 1 New Zealander basically running the entire place.  The poor guy had to wait on 10 tables, bus all of them and serve them.  So while I most definitely felt bad for him, the service was so god forsaken slow, Deanna and I were on the verge of serving ourselves coffee and getting our own silverware.   The only reason why I didn't give this place a lower ranking was because I really did enjoy my food and thought the whole diner kitchy decor was cute.  The inside reminded me of a old fashion yet hipster feeling diner.  It totally looked like a place that would fit right in in Williamsburg or the East Village.   

The menu here has a very healthy, yet has a weirdly Mexican slant to it.  For anyone who loves a good breakfast menu, this place will overwhelm you.  They have your basic omelettes, breakfast samplers and pancakes.  Then they also have tofu sweet potato hash, huevos volando, biscuits and gravy, eggs benedict, and several breakfast bowls - so it's definitely a wide variety of food.  Since I had spent the majority of my time in Chicago gorging on pork products and egg products, I opted for the la bazza bowl ($9.95) which is a vegetarian breakfast bowl.  It came with brown rice topped with two eggs, black beans, mixed sautéed veggies, tofu, kale , chihuahua cheese, sour cream and pico de gallo served with corn tortillas.  It tasted great and healthy.  I felt my cholesterol lowering with each bite of brown rice and tofu.  I should mention that the bowl is huge and I was able to split it into 2 separate meals.  The brown rice was nice and moist which is usually very hard to do with brown rice as it can easily get to be hard and dry.  Then there was a hefty amount of kale, which is my current favorite veggie so I was a huge fan of that part of the dish.  The mix of the cheese and sour cream also ensured that the entire dish was moist and delicious.  Essentially it was just a giant burrito bowl with some eggs thrown in which actually is totally fine with me.

All the other food on the menu also sounded  delicious and looked (based on my snooping of other people's food) great.  I'm not sure if it was because it was a weekday afternoon or if they were just cheap, but to only have 1 person working the restaurant just made a not so great customer experience.   Another watch out is that it's cash only, which is also usually a strike for me.  But the whole place was just so endearing and sweet looking (plus the fact that I actually had a lot of cash on me for the first time) that I don't want to dock it below 3 forks.  Total bill: $30 total.

Photo Credit: Yelp

Girl and the Goat Visited 11/4/2012 5 Forks

Girl and the Goat 809 W Randolph St., (between Green St & Halsted St), Chicago, IL 60607

I normally don't buy into a lot of restaurant hype but BELIEVE THE HYPE here.  That's right, it's a 5 fork kind of place.  I had been trying to get a reservation here forever and this time around I finally just gave up and called the Concierge Desk that comes with my Platinum Card.  Shockingly, they were able to secure a reservation but it was for 10pm on a Sunday night.  Deanna and I decided to take it anyways since we didn't have any plans for Monday and boy am I glad we decided to do it. 

It all started with their great service from the front of house.  Even though I don't mind eating late, 10pm to start dinner is still pretty late for me.  So I called them around 7:30pm to ask if there was any availability earlier in the night and they kindly told us that if we wanted to show up early they could accommodate us.  So we showed up at prime dinner time at 8pm and even though it was still very crowded, there were a few open tables and they were able to seat us within 10 minutes.  That's what I call great service because they could have easily said, "Too bad, your reservation is 10pm, so come in at 10pm" but they were able to be flexible and I appreciated it.  

The restaurant is situated in an industrial yet upscale part of Chicago.  It reminded me of DUMBO with all the warehouses and lofts but there are actually tons of great high end restaurants on this strip too. Inside,  the restaurant is pretty huge (with a gigantic open kitchen)  but it still had a nice and homey feel to it.  The decor is dark and trendy (lots of black furniture and dim lighting) but it still had a modern and accessible look to it.  

The menu is broken up into 3 sections: vegetable, seafood, and meat.  Everything is meant to be shared but the portions turned out to be fairly sizable.  Our waitress suggested 2-3 dishes each.  We decided to start with the Challah Back ($4) and Deanna ordered the roasted cauliflower ($11) and the mushroom ragout ($12) and I got the hamachi ($12) and the wood oven roasted pig face ($16).  The challah back is a warm loaf of challah bread served with bleu cheese butter and fennel tomato compote.  It was seriously out of this world.  The bread was so hot that it almost burned my hand.  It probably literally just came out of the oven.  The tomato compote was delicious and sweet and was an amazing combination with the bleu cheese butter.  The butter definitely had a bleu cheese flavor to it but it didn't have the overpowering taste that the cheese has on its own.  You wouldn't think that bread could blow your mind, but we literally devoured the entire loaf in about 10 minutes.  Next came the roasted cauliflower which was served with pickled peppers, pine nuts and mint.  It was roasted to perfection...crunchy but not raw and the peppers gave a nice heat to the dish.  The pine nuts and mint added a great aromatic flare to it as well.  I loved it and the serving size was perfect for sharing with multiple people.  Next came my hamachi crudo which was served with crispy pork belly bits, chili aoli and caperberries.  The hamachi is one of my favorite raw fishes and this one did not disappoint either.  It was super fresh and the salty pork belly was a nice touch to it.  I inhaled all 5 pieces in about 10 minutes.  Fabulous dish.  Next came the mushroom ragout which was served with sweet potato agnolotti, mushroom creme fraiche and capers.  It tasted like a warm stew or hearty pasta with the sweet potato offering a hint of sweetness.  It was comforting and felt cozy in my belly.  But the dish that the Girl and the Goat is most famous for is the pig face dish.  Not to worry for those who are sensitive to seeing an actual animal face on the plate.  The dish is basically chopped up pork served on a bed of potato stix, tamarmind sauce, cilantro, red-wine maple and topped with a sunny side egg.  The combination of the runny egg, salty pork and crunchy potato stix was like nothing I've had before.  It was an explosion of flavor and textures in my mouth.  So it thoroughly broke my heart when I couldn't finish the entire dish myself and had to leave a few bites on my plate.  

Despite only having 2 dishes each, Deanna and I were so full that we had to skip dessert.  Too bad.  Besides having great service from the host, our waitress was also awesome.  She was really honest with us when we were ordering.  When we rattled off what we were ordering, she told us that would be enough food for us.  Meanwhile other places train their waitstaff to encourage over ordering or up selling on beverages or dishes.  I loved that she put a stop to our ordering and if we had ordered one more dish, we probably would have been so full that we wouldn't have appreciated the food we did eat.  Our total bill ended up being less per person than our dinner the other night at Antico, which shocked me because the food was so much better here.  While I love love love most restaurants in NYC, Girl and the Goat is the one restaurant (besides a good deep dish pizza place) in Chicago that makes me super jealous that I don't live there.   It's one of the few affordable non-casual 5 forks places I've been to.  It's definitely worth all the pain and struggle of trying to get a table.  Good luck!  Total bill: $106 for 2 with tax and tip. 

Photo Credit: Yelp             

Storefront Company Visited 11/3/2012 2.5 Forks

Storefront Company 1941 W North Ave., Chicago, IL 60622

Storefront Company is a rather new restaurant on a pretty popular street in Bucktown.  But if I hadn't been looking for it in particular, I would have thought it was a jewelry store or something other than a restaurant.  That's because the outside of the restaurant has all this weird window dressing and items in the window instead of just having floor to ceiling windows giving people a peek inside the restaurant.  They should hire a new restaurant designer. 

The inside is huge, super spacious and very bright.  In fact, the only colors in the entire restaurant were black and white, which made the place feel a bit cold and not very cozy.  Since we had a fairly big party (4 adults and 2 children) they did kindly give us the large booth in the back of the restaurant.  This allowed the kids to kick and scream and not really bother too many people.  The menu here is an odd array of dishes and I can't quite figure out what type of cuisine they are going after.  They have a pancakes (pear, lemon and ricotta, and buttermilk), blue crab omelette, fried rice and egg, lamb burger, and chicken salad just to name a few.  Weird mix right?  While I generally would go for a more traditional brunch dish such as an omelette or eggs any style, I was strangely intrigued by the spicy veggie fried rice with 2 poached eggs ($11).  I was mainly drawn to this dish because I am obsessed with a traditional Thai fried rice that comes with a fried egg and I thought this could be a close dish.  Funnily enough, Deanna and Nima both got this dish too, so we were all pretty uncreative.  Luckily, Dave got the lamb burger ($12) and after seeing it, I kind of wish I had gotten that dish instead.

When the fried rice dish first came out, I was super excited because it looked great.  I saw 2 poached eggs over a bed of crunchy fried rice.  I excitedly poked the eggs hoping to see a super runny yoke.  Sadly when I poked the eggs, it was more like a hard boiled egg instead.  As many readers probably know, one of my biggest pet peeves in brunch place is a restaurant's inability to correctly poach an egg.  I mean that is one of the most basic cooking skills!  So despite the fried rice part of the dish being pretty darn good (it was crunchy like the bottom part of a paella that is scrapped off the bottom of the pan),  a runny yoke would have definitely made it a great dish.  Unfortunately it wasn't just my dish that had a bad yoke.  Deanna's eggs were also pretty well cooked so it seemed like it was more of a pattern than a one off issue.   But they did manage to fry the egg on Dave's burger pretty well because as soon as he bit into it, it oozed yoke.  I was so jealous looking at it.  I don't understand how a place can be so inconsistent with their egg preparation.  I should also mention that I also got a side of house cased maple sausage ($4) and honestly it was too sweet for me and didn't have enough of that meaty flavor to it.  But I will say that the size of the sausages were huge and you definitely get great bang for your buck when you order it.

As for service, our waitress was super sweet and nice but it took forever for our drinks and food to come and then it took a while to get our bill.  So in short, nice but slow service.   The place was an interesting find but the inability to poach an egg really put it on the lower end of the fork rating. 

Photo Credit: Yelp

Antico Visited 11/3/2012 3 Forks

Antico 1946 N Leavitt St., (between Homer St & Armitage Ave), Chicago, IL 60647

Antico is one of those off the beaten track little Italian places in Bucktown that you probably walk past every day and think to yourself that you should stop by but don't.  This past Saturday Deanna, Soph and I were trying to find a place in the neighborhood that didn't require a 30 minute wait and Antico quoted us only a 20 minute wait.  Great!  We head over and while they did have a few tables available, it was also pretty bustling.   Despite being in a hipster part of town, the clientele was more mature and older, so I wouldn't necessarily recommend this place if you're looking for a rockin time.

As we sit down, I immediately noticed how charismatic our waiter was.  He was super chatty and engaging and I will say a great sales person.  Deanna and I ordered a glass of wine and he immediately tried to up sell us on the most expensive wine on the menu.  And you know what, mission accomplished because we did end up getting the $14 glass vs. the $7 glass.  He also described the all the specials with amazingly delicious detail that Soph and I jumped on the Mussels special ($12) without even asking how much it was.  As for the rest of the menu, there were about 8-9 antipasti dishes, 4-5 pastas and 8-9 main entrees such as ribs, lamb, pork, and veal.  I opted for the pan seared pork tenderloin with braised leeks in a red wine sage reduction ($24), Soph got the lamb chop ($28) and Deanna got the entree size pappardelle with wild mushrooms ($28).  Price-wise, all of these dishes are about $10 overpriced for what they were, especially the pasta dish. 

Our appetizers came out quickly and I was immediately not impressed with the mussel appetizer.  The waiter made the mussels sound like they were this amazing dish that couldn't be missed but it was essentially steamed mussels in white wine, so kind of your standard mussels dish.  For $12, the mussels themselves were pretty small and there weren't nearly enough of them for the dish.  As for the main entrees, they did fair a little bit better.  My pork tenderloin was a pretty large size and it was cooked to the right degree of tenderness.  The red wine reduction was a little bit overwhelming and the leeks were a bit difficult to eat but the pairing of the 2 flavors did go well with the pork.  I just didn't think the dish was worth $24 when you consider some other really outstanding food you can get for much less.

All in all, Antico is still a cute neighborhood joint.  It could be a nice 1st date type of place or an every once in a blue moon visit, but with all the other amazing Chicago restaurants nearby and at these prices, you're probably better off being a regular at some other places.  Total bill: $143 without tip for 3 people.

Photo Credit: Yelp

Victory's Banner Visited 11/3/2012 3 Forks

Victory's Banner 2100 W Roscoe St. (between Hoyne Ave & Hamilton Ave), Chicago, IL 60618

I've had some pretty great brunches in Chicago so I was excited to hit up another spot while I was here this weekend.  Deanna had mentioned a few options and when she brought this place up, she had said that it was run by a bunch of "devotees",  I thought that she was joking.  But she also mentioned that the food was really delicious, so I said, What the heck?  When we got there I noticed that everyone was wearing a sari (and they weren't Indian), so that's when I realized that Deanna wasn't kidding when she said the place had a lot of "devotees".  The place seemed like more of a spiritual center with lots of pamphlets on meditation and a higher being than a restaurant, which is fine but just a tad weird.

The restaurant is also more like a cafe and the food is all vegetarian, mostly vegan.  I've actually been to a lot of places like these where the food is amazing and you don't miss the meat at all, so I was hoping this place would be like those.  At first glance, the menu here sounded amazing and I had a hard time narrowing down what I wanted to eat.  They have a lot of great sounding egg dishes and salads.  Since it was brunch I opted for the breakfast burrito which was a tortilla stuffed with 2 scrambled eggs, mushroom, red onion, red peppers, gouda, black beans and sour cream and served with organic salsa & brown rice on the side ($9.55).  Deanna got the Satisfaction-promise, which is 2 scrambled eggs with spinach, pesto, sun-dried tomatoes and feta ($9.45), except that Deanna got it with fresh tomato instead of sun-dried.  I also had this weird hankering for pancakes but didn't want to commit to a full stack and they were nice enough to bring my 1 single pancake.

As with all breakfast burritos I've had, this one was huge and just way too much food for one person.  I need to remember next time I"m at brunch to not order it because I never finish it and frankly all I really eat is the inside, which is essentially an egg scramble.  I was a bit disappointed that there didn't seem to be a lot of eggs in this one and the egg that was in it wasn't as moist or scrambled as I would have liked it.  Also the cheese on it wasn't melted at all and was kind of clumped on top.  I should have just gotten an omelet or some kind of egg scramble since I pretty much opened up the burrito and discarded the tortilla after 1 bite.   I did appreciate the brown rice as a healthy side as opposed to getting a bunch of potatoes but it would have been preferred it to have been inside the burrito instead.  Meanwhile, I was having a serious sweet craving and luckily the waitress told me that I could just get 1 small pancake instead of an entire stack which was music to my ears.   The pancake was made with oat bran and was the perfect serving size for what I was looking for.  It was perfectly fluffy but just a bit toasted on the outside for a bit of crunch.  The oat bran absorbed the syrup well without making it overly soggy and it just really hit the sweet spot I was trying to fulfill.   I tried Deanna's dish and I did like it more than my dish since it tasted more egg-y and just more breafast-y.  She also got an order of soy bacon and while it looked like a piece of soggy, sad fake bacon,  it was surprisingly good.  It tasted just like a piece of bacon but like the kind that doesn't have any fat or a meaty crisp to it.  But for fake meat, it was a fairly good copycat. 

Overall, I appreciated the healthy, hippie-dipping vibe the place was giving.  I wasn't totally annoyed with it, which normally I would, but they were so nice that it's hard to be cynical about it.  I definitely would get something other than the burrito and dare I even say that I would even consider getting a stack of pancakes, which is something I would never do but they were that good.  Total bill: $17/pp with tax and tip.

Photo Credit: Yelp