Ichiran Visited 5/25/2018 3.5 Forks

Ichiran  374 Johnson Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11206

There was been a LOT of buzz about Ichiran since it opened 2 years ago as it is a famous ramen chain in Japan.  It's famous not just for it's great flavors but because of it's unique seating arrangement.  This is the perfect place for introverts because you essentially eat in an isolation booth without having to see/talk to another human - yes, you heard me right.   You eat alone in a booth that kind of reminded me of the testing booth used when you take the GMAT.  You basically sit alone and you don't see your server or really talk to anyone.  Instead, you circle what you want on the paper menu, you slip the paper under the window and the waiter comes and gets it.  If you need more water,  you can ring a bell and the waiter will come and give you more water - but overall, the whole experience is very low on human interaction.  The good news is that if you come with someone else, they can open up one side of the booth so that you can talk to each other. 

As for the menu, there's really just 1 thing on the menu: 1 kind of ramen.  But you can pick how it's done from how strong you want the dashi (broth), richness of the broth, how much garlic, with or without scallions, with or without pork, level of spiciness, and then you can add additional toppings like egg, seaweed, mushroom or if you want more noodles.  They actually gave us a free coupon for more noodles, which originally I didn't think I would need but trust me, take the free coupon and get the additional noodles.  You'll need it to go with the abundance of broth you get.  I went with the recommended traditional version - medium dashi, medium richness, medium amount of garlic, with scallion and pork, medium spicy and medium firmness to the noodles.  Plus I got a hard boiled soy egg ($2.90 extra).  

I will say that the presentation is definitely Instagram worthy.  It's beautiful and looks picture perfect.  The flavor was exactly as described - everything was medium, ha!  The broth was nice and salty and the noodles were chewy and absorbed the flavors of the broth well.  You are definitely left with more broth which is where the extra noodles come in handy.  So why didn't I give it more forks?  Well, for spending over $20 on ramen, there wasn't enough pork or other toppings.  Basically it's a $25 bowl of broth, noodles and 2 slices of pork which is hard for me to swallow, especially when the same bowl costs $7 in Japan.  Yes, I realize that Ippudo and other top ramen places are priced not that far off but at least that's in the city.  This is in a random industrial strip in Bushwick.  All in all, it's a fun experiment and now there is one in Midtown so you don't have to trek to this one.  Total bill: $47 for 2 people with tax and tip

Photo Credit:  Yelp

Faro Visited 8/8/2017 3.5 Forks

Faro  436 Jefferson St., Brooklyn, NY 11237

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

Roberta's Visited 3/27/2011 4 Forks

Roberta's 261 Moore St., (between White St & Bogart St) Brooklyn, NY 11206

 Roberta's has been getting tons of buzz lately as a hipster haven.  To be honest, I didn't get that vibe at all when I went but maybe it's because I went for brunch.  The clientele was no more hipster than your typical Brooklyn restaurant.  Maybe it's a bit different during dinner?  The location of this restaurant is literally in the middle of nowhere.  Now I've been to Bushwick before but this is in a totally industrial area with almost nothing around it. It's really easy to completely drive/walk past it.  But once you walk in you're totally surprised by it.  It's a huge room with a bunch of communal tables and despite it's size it gave off this really warm feeling to it. 


The brunch menu has a few brunch-y items and then a few pizza selections.  Usually I like my brunch meal to include egg so I was really leaning towards the soft scrambled egg with hen of the woods mushroom, but this place is known of its pizza, so I felt like I really had to give a pizza a try.  So I got the bee sting pizza ($13) which came with tomato, mozzarella, sopressata, fresh basil and then topped with honey.  Dan got the pork belly ($13) which came on a bed of polenta, poached egg and pecorino.  We both got a coffee (mine was iced and Dan's was hot) and usually coffee is nothing to write about but here they don't give you sugar but a bottle of sugar water instead.  I don't know if it really made my coffee taste much differently but mentally it made me not love my coffee as much.


The pizza came out first and it was steaming HOT.  And of course I was so anxious to eat that I just grabbed a slice and the oil on the pizza dripped on my hand and it was incredibly painful.  My bad.  Now I usually don't love thin crust pizza, but this one I must say was pretty damn good.  You could just tell from looking at it that all the ingredients were super fresh and I think they do grow a lot of the herbs and stuff in their backyard.  There was lots of oozy fresh mozzarella and chopped tomato on it.  The sopressata on top of it is was thinly sliced and looked like pepperoni but with a definite spicy kick.  The honey was a nice touch and not very overpowering.  What was really great about the pizza was the dough/crust.  It was thin but still had a dough-y consistency.  I had the entire pizza, crust and all, which almost never happens unless I am drunk. As for Dan's dish,  I had one bite and I got a nice piece of pure fat and I thought the polenta had a nice creamy consistency.  I didn't get to taste the egg but it was poached perfectly and gave the polenta a very yolk-y topping.  Dan thought the dish was missing something but couldn't pin point what it was but judging by the fact that he ate the entire dish, I'm not so sure he didn't like it as much as he lead on.


I had looked at our table mates' food and they had the fried egg and duck hash dish and the pancake and they both looked tasty.  The eggs were fried with a nice running yolk and the pancake looked huge and fluffy, so it looks like even if you don't get the pizza there, you can still have a great meal there.  I would totally go back there for dinner and I heard that in the summer they open the outdoor patio, so look out for me there in a few months. Total bill $39 without tip.