Eat the Week; March 18th - March 22nd

St. Patrick's Day lunch in Gowanus at Fletcher's | Our dinner at Izakaya Seki in D.C. | Pete Wells awards one star to Chez Sardine | A peek at some of the construction on the Whole Foods in Gowanus | Donde Dinner? - 81 Greenwich Avenue

Donde Dinner? - 81 Greenwich Ave

Donde Dinner? wants to make your next dining experience an adventure. So, every Friday, we pick a restaurant and post its address for you. The catch is, that's all the information you get. No name, no type of cuisine, and no Googling. But first, here's last week's address:

549 Classon Avenue = Alice's Arbor

This week's restaurant follows typical Donde Dinner? fashion. Price, quality, and accessibility have all been taken into account. You won't be waiting at the bar for two hours with $15 cocktails and you never have to worry about a dress code. Just hop on the train, or your feet, or your bike, and head to:

81 Greenwich Avenue (map)

Whole Lotta Groceries

Whole Foods Market has owned the lot at the corner of 3rd and 3rd in Gowanus since 2004. After plenty of backlash from the community, and years spent cleaning and remediating the once industrial lot, construction only somewhat recently began. Now that it has, the 52,000-square foot megastore (25% smaller than the original proposed grocery) is going up at a mind-blowing rate. Foundation beems are all in place and progress can easily be detected on a daily basis.

There will be a 20,000-square foot greenhouse on the roof, growing vegetables to be sold inside. Plans for the greenhouse were developed after developers decreased the number of onsite parking spaces from over 400 to 250. The market is slated to open this fall.

As for the Coignet Building on the corner (360 Third Ave), that isn't going anywhere. The 140-year-old, former New York and Long Island Coignet Stone Company office building is landmarked. That means, as NYC.gov explains, "the Landmarks Preservation Commission officially recognizes the building has special historical, cultural, or aesthetic value and that the building is an important part of New York City's historical and architectural heritage. To help protect the city's landmarks from inappropriate changes or destruction, the Commission must approve in advance any alteration, reconstruction, demolition, or new construction affecting the designated building." Whole Foods has invested in improvements for the building, and those include a new roof and exterior repairs. Oh, and it's for sale. Property owner Richard Kowalski is taking bids.

Chez Sardine Gets Ichi Star

[courtesy chezsardine.com]Gabe Stulman opened Perla at the beginning of 2012. Former Babbo chef Michael Toscano commands the kitchen there, and in May last year, Pete Wells filed a two-star review on the restaurant. Chez Sardine, Stulman's fifth, opened in November, and today Wells gives the restaurant one star.

Chez Sardine is the restaurant group's first Asian restaurant, loosely inspired by Japanese izakayas (restaurants we love to eat in). Mehdi Brunet-Benkritly is the chef, and he's got four years at Au Pied De Cochon on his resume. Between there and Sardine, he created a menu with American and bistro leans at Fedora, another restaurant under Stulman's umbrella.

Pete Wells' review has more than one reference to "Asian Stoner Food," but the menu is not without well-executed food. "Hamachi with chicharrones reads like a declaration of war," Wells begins, "but no. The pork skins add crunch and a savoriness that deepens as you chew and that is kept in check by pickled ginger. And Arctic char, cured with sugar and lime zest and smoked, makes for sushi you could happily eat for breakfast." "And there are lovely little grace notes," he continues, "like the brussels sprouts in brown butter with apple purée, good enough to make you wish Mr. Brunet-Benkritly would take an interest in vegetables more often."

Despite snack, sushi bar, small and large plate options on the menu, "There are, in fact," Wells writes, "very few ways to put together a balanced meal at Chez Sardine." But Stulman's Little Wisco empire has grown even since Chez Sardine. Montmartre opened in Chelsea just three months later; proving, if there were any doubts before, Stulman's got his formula down to a science. Maybe Wells will check in on Montmartre and find more to like on Tien Ho's menu. [NYTimes]

Izakaya Seki in Washington D.C.

We already covered lunch at Ben's Chili Bowl, and now that Guinness Week is a cloudy, lingering hangover, the only thing left from our 24-hour trip to D.C. is to post about Izakaya Seki, the restaurant Hiroshi Seki and his daughter Cizuka opened on V Street in July.

Izakayas are Japanese watering holes that serve food to go with the drink. The menus tend to be no frills and offer dishes that might be described as Japanses tapas. Because there's a lack of inferior options on the menu at Izakaya Seki, deciding on what to get was overwhelming, so we asked if we could do an omakese/chef's tasting sort of thing. It was a request our gracious server kindly obliged and proceeded to execute with a firm understanding of Mr. Seki's food. Here's what we had:

Click to read more ...

St. Patrick's Day at Fletcher's Barbecue

Fletcher's Brooklyn Barbecue was recently on the receiving end of some high praise from Times critic Pete Wells. After eating at three of the city's newest barbecue restaurants (Mighty Quinn's, BrisketTown, and Fletcher's), Wells wrote, "The sides made the strongest case for Fletcher’s." Yesterday, in celebrating St. Patrick's Day, one of those was butter braised cabbage. It was part of an $8 special that included corned beef and Irish soda bread, which owners Bill Fletcher and Matt Fisher sourced from nextdoor neighbors Four and Twenty Blackbirds. For $14, you could wash it all down with a bottle of Brooklyn Brewery's Dry Irish Stout.

Matt Fisher had brisket curing for the better part of the month. After nearly two weeks covered in all spice and bay, they were steamed and then sliced to order. The meat was tender and juicy, with a fatcap that was eager to melt in your mouth. Grainy mustard spiced things up, and the hearty chunk of soda bread turned out to be an excellent sponge for the cabbage's butter broth. It's the perfect meal to fortify your stomach at the start of a day that requires drinking Guinness for the majority of it.

Eat the Week; March 11th - March 15th

[R.I.P'ino]We kicked off Guinness Week with a pint at An Beal Bocht Cafe in the Boogie Down | Guinness Week part II at Swift Hibernian Lounge in Manhattan | Pete Wells awards two stars to Jeepney and Pig and Khao | Guinness Week part III at Pete's Ale House in Brooklyn | Guinness Week part IV at Molly's Shebeen in Manhattan | Guinness Week part V at McGuinness's in Sunnyside | Donde Dinner? - 549 Classon Avenue

Donde Dinner? - 549 Classon Ave

Donde Dinner? wants to make your next dining experience an adventure. So, every Friday, we pick a restaurant and post its address for you. The catch is, that's all the information you get. No name, no type of cuisine, and no Googling. But first, here's last week's address:

61 Delancey Street = Cocoron

This week's restaurant follows typical Donde Dinner? fashion. Price, quality, and accessibility have all been taken into account. You won't be waiting at the bar for two hours with $15 cocktails and you never have to worry about a dress code. Just hop on the train, or your feet, or your bike, and head to:

549 Classon Avenue (map)