A Non-John Lennon-Themed FiPS Food & Drink Roundup

It's officially the fall, folks. Pumpkin spice abounds. As is the case every fall, there's always a crop of new restaurant & bar openings to look forward to. At the same time, far too often the fall means restaurants shuttering after a disappointing summer. As we make our way through October, it looks like there are a lot more openings than closing in the hood, so I guess that's a good thing.

Tomorrow, Brooklyn Porridge Co. reopens for their second season, after debuting last year in the space occupied by Uncle Louie G’s during the warmer months. Last year, as the winter tried to kill me, I stopped by a few times. Meh. It's gonna take more than a bowl of grains to get my motor running, especially at $7 for a tiny bowl of the stuff. Still, I'll probably find myself there at least once this winter, likely around the time when it gets so fucking freezing that it's a wonder that I've actually left the apartment.

In reopening news, last week The Chocolate Room officially opened their doors to their new, larger space down 5th Ave between Bergen & St Mark's. I, for one, am more excited about the impending arrival of Nunu's Chocolates in the hood. Park Slopers seem to enjoy The Chocolate Room though & I’m going to spare you from my brilliant chocolate/poop/Park Slope breeder joke, so I guess there’s no need to shit on them for now.

When Brooklyn Fish Camp closed about a month ago, Park Slope let out a collective "Wait...do we even care?" Sure the options for seafood in the neighborhood are slim, but Brooklyn Fish Camp had a lot of dissenters. Late last week, The Daily Meal reported that Lien and Edward Lin, formerly of San Fran's 2014 James Beard Award winning Slanted Door, will be moving into the former Fish Camp storefront & opening up a yet-to-be-named Vietnamese gastropub. Your guess is as good as mine as to what the fuck "Vietnamese gastropub" means. Regardless, I'm way more excited about this place than I ever was about Brooklyn Fish Camp.

The biggest opening news of the season came just this morning when Here's Park Slope broke the still-technically-rumored news that the space on the corner of 5th Ave & 1st that once housed Great Lakes and then the recently shuttered Terroir has found its next tenant--Two Boots. That's right...the gimmicky, child-romping, New Orleans-style pizzeria that closed their 2nd St & 7th Ave location back at the end of last year is returning to the neighborhood to render a storefront less cool than its two previous incarnations.

On the closing front, Uncle Arthur's Cafe, the restaurant that opened this past April Fool’s Day in a spot on 9th St just off 4th Ave, has closed after only six months in business. When I wrote about them a month after their opening, I mentioned that "I'm worried that, unless people start to realize that it's there, Uncle Arthur's may not be long for this earth. The food & atmosphere totally work, but it's a good-sized space & there's only so long they can go on with evenings full of empty tables." During its short tenure, I sat at the bar with food & drink on a handful of occasions and saw nothing to discount these fears. Word is that the closing is apparently due to irreconcilable differences between the owners but still.

Finally, in what seems to be an neverending stream of long-established Park Slope businesses closing, we learned on Tuesday that Luscious Foods, a mainstay on 5th Ave for the last decade, will be shutting down operations come the end of the month. As is often the case these days, the reason for their closing is an unreasonable rent hike. Let's hope that the landlord fills the vacancy with whatever the 2015 equivalent of brick-oven pizza/tacos/frozen yogurt ends up being.