For the last few years, the hot Brooklyn neighborhood has been Bushwick and despite living not too far from it, I rarely go there. So when my friend Vince emailed and said he made a random reservation at the latest hot spot in Bushwick called Faro, I was game. The immediate area surrounding Faro is exactly what you would think of when you hear Bushwick - tons of graffiti, murals and industrial space. We hit up a fun beer garden/gastropub called The Rookery for a quick drink, so if you need a place to meet up with friends before dinner, I would highly recommend that place.
As for Faro itself, the space seemed to fit the neighborhood. It was very industrial, spacious and airy. It had kind of a cold feel to it but not in a super uninviting way. The menu is actually Italian, which is something I wouldn't have guessed by the look of the place. They specialize in pasta but we also got a few appetizers and entrees as well. We started with the tuna tartarte ($16), beets ($14) and a mackerel crudo ($15) as well as the whole wheat bread ($6). Of these starters, the bread was my favorite. There is really nothing like freshly baked warm soft bread with salty butter. Carbs and gluten be damned, I am willing to risk getting fat for this kind of bread. Unfortunately I wasn't as jazzed about the other appetizers. To be fair, they were all good because they are all really standard dishes that are generally good tasting but none of them set my palate on fire.
Luckily the pasta was much better. We got basic spaghetti alla chitara ($20), the special pasta of the day which was pasta with truffle and the mafalde ($22). The texture and consistency of all the pastas were all excellent and the mafalde came with crab and uni cream which was delicious and my favorite of the night. The truffle pasta was a bit disappointing in that it didn't taste super truffle-y but then again I would probably complain if it was too heavy on the truffle flavor.
Since we were all gluttons for punishment, we also ordered the scallops ($26) and the duck ($27). The good news is that the scallops (all 2 of them) were amazing. They were huge, plumb and just the right texture. I just wish that for almost $30 you got more than 2. The bad news was that the duck wasn't all that. It was a bit on the dry side even thought it was cooked medium rare. It was just missing the moist tenderness that a good duck should have. At roughly the same price, I would have rather gotten 2 orders of the scallops instead.
We left room for dessert and got the chocolate olive oil cake and the panna cotta with hazelnut. I'll be honest, I was kind of drunk at this point so I don't really remember eating them but if I had to take a drunken guess, I'll say I liked the olive oil cake more than the panna cotta.
One thing to note was that Anuja and my aperol spritzs were definitely not good. It's such a typical fun Italian drink that any good Italian restaurant should do well but something was off about it - it was almost like they substituted the aperol with something else.
The waitstaff was really nice and friendly and I think if my meal didn't have the aperol spritz or the duck, I would have been willing to go up to 4 forks. Although this isn't to say you shouldn't spend time in Bushwick and check out this place out. If you are making a day of it, I'd say go to Rookery for drinks and games and then come here for some pasta.
Photo Credit: Yelp
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