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Also, if it’s not ridiculously hot out, they have a very nice backyard/terrace!
Thanks for the reminder. I havent been in over 5 years for no particular reason. Well, the Michelin star didnt help (me)
Who knew it had a star! They are very low key about it; didn’t even mention it in their blurb about the restaurant: https://www.clarobk.com/about/
Guess they really, really want to attract you, who is mostly interested in restaurants “on the cusp,” but not awarded! 
It is a nice terrace, cool and breezy on a muggy Sunday afternoon.
And the place was surprisingly empty at 2:30 pm.
You know, @Ziggy , we had never been before in all these years.
I think their evening tasting menu is $80 probably, with drinks and tortillas a much better deal than the good but not great dinner I had recently at non-Michelin Buttermilk Channel which cost me all in$109 for a main, a salad a glass of their least expensive wine and half a dessert. Prices in Downtown Brooklyn are definitely up there.
But I wonder how their fusion cuisine would stack up to your mexican experience.
We do like Alta Calidad up here on Vanderbilt quite a lot, similarly ambitious
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Oh dont get me started on Michelin in NYC again This is not even the strangest one. Somtum Der, Danji come to mind. I’m glad I enjoyed them unknowingly “on the cusp” when it was still easy to grab a table.
You can also order a la carte from the bar menu, but probably need to sit at the bar if I recall.
yes thats right.
Lakruwana, Staten Island today for the buffet. Stood in the friendly line for our mid-afternoon meal. Food offered was good not great - the pork curry was the best dish for me along with the dry coconut sambal - I think its called pol sambol. Very mild, little spice of any kind and onion relishes had been sitting around too long IMO. The kale dish was very fresh and coconutty but not much else, the devil chicken was cooked well but little spice and I couldnt figure out the seasoning in the eggplant though it was savory. Dal was good. Going back I would definitely order from the a la carte menu, there were no hoppers, string hoppers, fish, lampries etc at all on this good but plain buffet menu. Beautiful place, mellow friendly hosts.
Rangoon Took my daughter out to dinner to the Crown Heights location last Friday and had a nice meal at a high top (very few indoor tables here). Onion fritters, mango shrimp salad and pork stew with tea leaves were all good but flavors were maybe not as bright as they could have been. Pork was very high quality, beautifully cooked and a decent serving for sharing but to while I appreciated its quality, I feel like I enjoyed a similar dish with smaller pork pieces, and a higher quotient of tea leaves and other vegetables at a burmese hole in the wall in jackson heights many years ago much more. I cant be the only person who prefers green or green-ish mango in a mango salad? the texture and sharpness are to me a lot more enjoyable than slippery ripe mango slices. Very good cooking going on but I wonder whether the Crown Heights operation has been affected by the Chelsea opening. Still worth a visit if in the area.
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I was there not long ago! And I concur with your assessment. Also, it was really fucking hot in there.
I have a Calvin Trillin adjacent story. Way back in the late 80s when I was in grad school I did a summer internship at a big New York firm. I became friends with another intern. He had a party one weekend and invited me. He was living on Grove Street. I walk into this most amazing brownstone with a yard and this massive tree in the middle of it. My friend tells me it’s Calvin Trillan’s home. Apparently he would go away for the summer and would rent out his house to grad students who were somehow connected to him or through people he knew. I recall wandering around the house just amazed by its contents and owner. Spent a decent amount of time in that house over the summer. So it was like I was connected to him but once removed.
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I was just looking at this the other day. Thanks for the report (and the fancy font color gets special mention!)
Oh, that is cool! My friends used to live in ee cummings’ old house (on Patchin Place), but I’m pretty sure all his stuff was gone!
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we tried san matteo pizza and espresso bar the other night, on the ues, pizza was pretty good, not to get too nerdy but tastes like a 3 minute bake which is not really Neapolitan pizza. still, one of the better pizzas in the area, warm service, cozy little restaurant.
The one at 90th or 81st?
My family liked the one at 90th a lot (I haven’t been in several years), but I always found it slightly underbaked in the center for my taste (but then I think that with most Neapolitan pies, Motorino UWS being one of the worst offenders of soggy center).
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90th st, the bake in the middle was firm and crispy!
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My wife and I are just beginning a 30-day stay in Bed-Stuy, mostly for the purpose of eating. We did a similar 30-day stay last year. I thought I’d post mini-reviews here of the restaurants we have eaten in.
Our first meal on Tuesday night was a local Bed-Stuy favorite of ours from last year, the Trad Room. It doesn’t get much critical attention, but we have found it to be excellent Asian bistro food and the little garden patio is extremely pleasant, especially during this great cool August weather. The market salad was delicious, with an Asian-leaning creamy dressing (more sesame than miso). The fried oysters, fried squid, and spicy crunchy tuna rolls were all satisfying, if not particularly innovative. I wish we had the Trad Room in our neighborhood back home. We’d eat there regularly.
Our second meal was takeout from Ali’s Trinbago Roti Shop in Crown Heights. This is walking distance from our apartment and Pete Wells ranked it #88 in the entire city in April 2023 Best 100 NYC restaurants list, so it was an easy choice.
We had goat roti and bone-in chicken roti (at 5 pm they were out of doubles and pholourie). We like Trini food quite a bit and this was an excellent version, maybe a touch better than the nearby A & A Bake & Doubles. But it’s ridiculous for Pete Wells to rank this place in the Top 100 in the entire city.
Tonight we had an early dinner (during Happy Hour) at Rangoon, a Burmese place in Crown Heights near the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. This restaurant is also on Pete Wells’ Best 100 list (at # 52) and has a Michelin Bib Gourmand designation.
The dining area is very pleasant and quiet (at 5 pm) and really friendly informative servers. and we enjoyed our meal. But my wife and I both thought the food fell a little short of other Burmese restaurants we’ve eaten at in the DC area.
The only real disappointment was the tea leaf salad (photo attached)
, which basically was a shredded cabbage, cherry tomato, and peanut salad, with only a sprinkling of tea leaves, almost as just a garnish. We are used to tea leaf salads that are made almost entirely of tea leaves – with this version, you really couldn’t taste the tea leaves very much.
I thought the chilled noodles with tamarind were outstanding and wolfed them down, but my wife was much less impressed (which left more for me).
Everything else was at least very good to excellent, but not really outstanding. The mohinga fish soup, with an onion fritter, was hearty and satisfying, but didn’t have the zippiness you’d expect from a Burmese soup. The grilled shrimp skewers were excellent, with a heavy marinade of fish sauce. The onion fritter bao (a happy hour special) was very good, but a little heavy.
I had not seen JenKalb’s review of Rangoon (above) before eating there tonight, but I agree with her bottom line – there is some very good cooking at Rangoon, but it’s more of a restaurant to go to if you’re already in the neighborhood, rather than a destination restaurant.
My go-to critic for New York food has long been Robert Sietsema (of the Village Voice and now Eater), and I haven’t really developed much of a sense for Pete Wells, probably because he has previously focused on super-high-end restaurants that we rarely go to. But his recent “Best Of” list has quite a few reasonably priced restaurants on it.
We’ve eaten in two restaurants in Wells’ top 100 on back-to-back days (Ali’s and Rangoon), and I’m beginning to wonder why my tastes align well with his. To me (and to my wife), the meal we had at the Trad Room, which is not on the critics’ radar, was significantly better than the two restaurants Wells views as being in the top 100.
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Rangoon just opened a branch in Manhattan and I think that might have had an impact on the Brooklyn operation. There is the universal problem of cooking for an audience of foreigners rather than your own folks - althoug there is a small group of burmese monks in the area, I believe, burmese are rare on the ground in Brooklyn.
I have a bit of a hard time with Sietsema dating back to a time when I was convinced that he we fixated more on highlighted the weird and innards rather than great taste. Dont really follow any critic at this time tho their suggestions will always pique my interest. Rangoon’s food is high quality - I guess I am glad I did not persuade my daughter to add the tea leaf salad (one of my favorites) to the order. There was not much in the pork dish either
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Sietsema sold me when my wife and I ended up in Owensboro, Kentucky on vacation to eat at the famous mutton barbecue places there. Sietsema had recently gone to Owensboro on his own vacation to eat barbecue and the place he recommended was by far the best of the three places we ate at in Owensboro.
That’s my kind of food critic – one who goes on vacation to eat.
I know what you mean about the innards though. I remember one Village Voice review when Sietsema and the late Dr. John (the New Orleans musician) went around NYC trying eyeballs dishes.
as a native New Yorker, if i see folks in need of direction, i’ll tell them where to go or in this case, put your money away.
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