Prime Meats Visited 2/20/10 3 Forks

Prime Meats 465 Court St
(between 3rd Pl & 4th Pl), Brooklyn, NY 11231


Prime Meats has been very hyped due to the fact that it's owned by the same people as Frankie's. I tried to go a month ago and was told it was a 2 hour wait on a Friday at 9:30pm. This time, I went on a Saturday night @ 8pm, which obviously was no better. The host told me it was about a 2 hour wait and I just gave in. I gave him my cell # and Dan and I went and grabbed drinks at the Irish pub next door.

The wait ended up being a little over an hour instead. After sitting down, I totally understand why the wait is so long. The place is tiny! There must be about 10-15 seats total in the entire restaurant. It doesn't help that the bar is in the front and takes up half the restaurant, which makes the place overly crowded. I don't know what is up with this hipster, old school, Prohibition look, but Prime Meats also had it. Everyone wore vests, had many tattoos and had ironic mustaches. I'm so over that look.

I ordered the Apple Sazerac ($10) after finding out that the punch of the day was a Mai Thai. I was torn over what to order for my main meal. I was partial to the burger but I kind of feel like that's a cop out. So instead, I ordered the Sürkrüt Garnie (chouchrote garnie, slow cooked pork belly, Thuringian bratwurst, calf tongue & knackwurst served with house made sauerkraut ($16) and Dan ordered the burger with cheese and thick cut bacon ($13 for the burger and $4 extra for the cheese and bacon) and a pint of Oatmeal stout ($7). I was a bit hesitant about my meal but when I came out I was overwhelmed. There was so much food and lots of meat! I wish they had told me what was what on my plate b/c they all looked like meat to me and I was particularly curious as to which one was the calf tongue. But I was able to pick out the pork belly immediately and it was amazing. I think it's really really hard to get pork belly wrong. I also surprisingly loved the sauerkraut, it cut the fattiness of the meat well. But I could barely finish my plate and I am even regretting eating as much as I did. One of the meats just tasted like a hot dog and what I think was the calf tongue really just tasted like meat.

Dan's burger came out super rare, which is the way he actually like it and I had a bite and it was super delicious, but I'm not sure if it was worth $17. My drink turned out to be much stronger than I thought it was not very cocktail like. Instead it came out looking like straight whiskey in a small glass.

I was super curious about the meat plate that everyone was eating but I definitely could not have eaten more than I did. The name definitely speaks to how incredibly meat focused it is there, but I did see some veggie items. The host was very nice and apologetic for making us wait, and although I liked it, I'm not sure how worth the 1+ hour wait it was. Maybe 30-40 mins max. But definitely a great place if you are craving meat.

Okeanos Visited 2/20/10 1.5 Forks

Okeanos 314 7th Ave
(between 4th Ave & 8th St) Brooklyn, NY 11215


I had originally been excited that a new restaurant was opening up on 7th Ave, but yet again, I feel like the quality of restaurants on this street is pretty disappointing. Dan and I mainly went b/c he had seen the menu when walking by one day and they had Eggs Benedict and Eggs Florentine on their brunch menu. We were starving when we went b/c I had waited an hour to get my taxes done, so were were very excited to sit down and eat. The place was pretty empty when we went at 1pm, which generally isn't a great sign. Dan and I really miss 2nd Street Cafe which had amazing brunchy egg products and have been dying to find a proper substitute. He ordered the eggs benedict ($10) and I order the eggs florentine ($10) and each got coffee ($2/each).

One minor complaint is that when we ordered our coffee they didn't bring any cream or milk out and after I asked for it, they brought a little thing of milk, which was fine, but then they brought a little bowl of empty creamer! WTF? The food came out and Dan's meal looked pretty standard but mine looked pretty different. I was expecting basically eggs benedict but with spinach instead of ham. But mine was baked in a baking dish and had 2 pieces of bread covered with cheesy spinach and 2 "poached" eggs. I don't understand how any restaurant, especially one that is practically empty, can't get poached eggs correctly. The eggs were completely over cooked. I like my poached eggs runny and these were almost cooked all the way through. The other bad part of my meal was that the bread was completely hard and I could barely cut through it. I ended up just not eating it.

The potatoes were flavorful but Dan's main complaint was that they were too big and that hash potatoes shouldn't require so much cutting. We agreed that the highlight of our meal was the side salad, which is never a good sign.

Geido Sushi Visited 2/19/10 3 Forks

Geido 331 Flatbush Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11217


I have heard great things about Geido for many years but just could never bring myself to cross Flatbush to make it there. After we walked past it on the way to Franny's, I decided that I had to make the effort to go.

The walk from my apt wasn't as bad as I had thought. It's literally right on the corner for Flatbush and 7th Ave, so it was about a 15 min. walk. When I entered the restaurant, I was taken aback at how bright and airy it was. The entire waitstaff immediately greets you in Japanese when you enter. The place just really struck me as a place I would love, I can't explain why. I think what I like is that it's not just sushi but that it has a bunch of other Japanese speciality foods. The environment is very much an izakaya meets sushi bar.

Dan and I split a sashimi platter ($15), an Obama roll ($9.90), a miss pepper roll ($6.50) and a small bottle of cold sake ($10). I was tempted to order the omakase, which looked amazing in the menu but Dan and I weren't sure if we needed that much food, but I will definitely order it the next time I go. The sake was sweet and very pleasant on the tongue. The Obama roll was tuna, salmon, yellowtail covered with crunch. It was pretty good and the miss pepper roll which was just a yellowtail and jalapeno roll. Usually this type of roll has the crunch green jalapeno pepper but was a sweet soft pepper. They had many many other rolls that sounded delicious but we just couldn't fit it in. I wasn't overly impressed with the miss pepper roll but the sashimi was pretty fresh and delicious. It came with 4 pieces of tuna, 2 pieces of salmon, 4 pieces of white fish wrapped around scallion, 3 pieces of mackerel and 4 other pieces of some other kind of fish that I couldn't figure out but was pretty good b/c it came topped with ginger. I usually hate mackerel but this one was pretty fresh tasting, although it was still pretty fishy in general.

despite the walk, I will most definitely be back to this restaurant and order the omakase and maybe some different rolls.

Beet Visited 2/18/10 3 Forks

Beet Thai 344 Seventh Avenue, Brooklyn NY

Beet is one of those typical cheap but good thai places, but I have a particular soft spot for this place. I feel like it's really good and what I particularly like is that the tofu in their pad thai and other noodle dishes is steamed and not fried, which makes it taste and feel much healthier.

VA and I split the crab avocado salad ($8), which was half an avocado split open filled with spicy crab meat and mayo. I was surprised that they used real blue crab meat and it was really quite good. The one disappointment was that the avocado was really hard and inedible. We also split the veggie spring rolls ($4), which was pretty standard. I ordered glass noodles with tofu ($7) and an x-rated french martini ($8). For a basic thai place they had a nice list of fancy martinis that were pretty good. VA got a lychee martini and my french martini had chambord in it. The glass noodles were really good and full for veggie and large chunks of steamed tofu. VA got the spicy broad noodle ($7) which was said was good but she did find some strange hard pieces in it.

The wait staff was very accommodating and when I ordered the noodles with no celery and VA ordered her dish with extra baby corn. It's definitely becoming one of my go-to thai restaurants in the 'hood.

Franny's, Visited 2/14/10, 2.75 Forks

Franny's 295 Flatbush Ave
(between Prospect Pl & St Marks Ave) Brooklyn, NY 11217

I had heard and read about Franny's for a long time as being one of the better restaurants in the 'hood, but never been. It took about 15-20 minutes to walk there from our apt but it was a really interesting walk since there were tons of great looking places to eat on Flatbush. It's definitely a street worth checking out when the weather gets nicer.

The wait was about 15 minutes, which wasn't bad considering it was Valentine's Day. I appreciated that they didn't have a prix-fixe menu like many restaurants. We all started with a round of drinks ($10-13 for cocktails, $7 for beer). I had a ketel one and fresh grapefruit juice, aarti had a bloody mary, will a glass of red wine and dan had a pint of kelso pilsner. My drink was pretty good and a decent size.

The menu at Franny's is mostly wood-oven thin crust pizza and they have a real focus on using seasonal ingredients. The seasonal ingredients were mainly used on the appetizers. We ordered the beet salad with peccorino cheese, roast fennel and a cristino with proccuito and egg and bean. You could definitely tell that they used fresh ingredients and took care in preparing the food. I was a bit disappointed that the cristino was only 1 piece...for $9, I would expect at least 2 pieces, but the 1 piece was pretty tasty. The egg was used as a spread on the bottom. Dan and I ordered the tomato, buff mozz and sausage pizza ($17) and aarti and will ordered the same thing with no sausage ($16). I was a bit annoyed that the waitress was trying to up sell us by saying "well, you ordered kind of light for 4 people. The pizzas are really for 1." I had seen the pizzas before ordering and they are definitely enough for 2 if you had apps before hand.

In general, I'm not a huge pizza lover. I mean, I like pizza and would never be adverse to eating it but to me, it's really hard to make a bad pizza if you use the right ingredients. Our pizza was good, light and fluffy. I even ate the crust, which I normally don't do. We had left room for dessert but when we looked at the dessert menu, it was pretty disappointing. There was nothing any of us really wanted, which is pretty hard to do and I think a bad sign for a restaurant when people actually left room in their stomach for dessert. The total bill for the 4 of us was $132. While I don't think there was anything wrong with the food, I think it's a bit expensive for what you get.

Congee Village, Visited 2/14/10 3.5 Forks

Congee Village 100 Allen St, New York, NY 10002

Happy Chinese New Year! Instead of trying to maneuver the masses in Chinatown, we decided to go to Congee Village, which is in the LES. We had been there before for Will's birthday and had enjoyed the food. Even though it's a bit out of the way from Chinatown, it was still pretty crowded. Luckily, we were seated in about 15-20 minutes and sat in the room to the left and squeezed all the way in the corner. The menu is definitely a bit overwhelming but they do a really good job of taking pictures of the food and having english translations.

We ordered pea shoot tops, some sort of pork patty with fish sauce, sizzling beef plate, tofu and eggplant, and flounder. I had tried to speak to the waitress in mandarin but they mostly speak Cantonese there and she wouldn't really work with me. I had wanted to order a whole steamed fish but she told me that all they had was a 3 lb sea bass, which seemed too big for 3 people. She said they had a flounder "with meat", which I didn't understand. But when it came out, they had basically cut all the fish meat out, fried the rest of the fish, and sauteed the fish with veggies and put it on the fried fish body. It was pretty good but I would have still liked a whole fish. Everything was pretty tasty. Pea shoot tops are always great, how can you not like garlic sauteed veggies? The sizzling beef platter was cooked well with great seasoning. The tofu and eggplant came on a weird sterno lit dish and the tofu was the soft version but deep fried on the outside. The eggplant was cooked to the point it was mushy but i like it that way b/c otherwise it's too tough to eat. Dan and Will picked the pork patties based on the photo in the menu and they looked exactly like they did in the menu. I had never had these before and they basically tasted like a sausage patty with some fish sauce in it. I was pretty full but not stuffed to the point of pain. The best part of eating chinese food, family style is that it all cost $20/pp!

Pagoda, Visited 2/12/10 1.5 Forks

Pagoda 333 Graham Avenue
(between Devoe St & Metropolitan Ave)

This place is very close to Dan's house and with us being lazy, we decided this was the easiest choice. There are so many good cheap Thai places in New York/Brooklyn, but this isn't really one of them. First, the menu is pretty basic and just had your standard thai fare, nothing exotic or different. We ordered the pad see yu ($8.50) and some kind of noodle in curry dish ($8.50) and 2 thai ice teas. They then told us that they only had enough ingredients for 1 thai ice tea...it was only 8:30pm on a Friday. What kind of thai place only has ingredients for 1 thai ice tea during rush hour? But oh well. The food was pretty basic, nothing to write home about. I thought there weren't enough noodles in my pad see yu, I left still feeling hungry. But at least the bill only came out to $21. If I had to have thai in this part of Williamsburg, I would pick Cheers Thai over this place.