[What You Should Order At...] Union Hall

WHAT YOU SHOULD ORDER AT...is a recurring column designed in kind for your opinionated asses and our lazy asses. When the mood strikes, we pick one Park Slope resto and recommend our favorite dish. Are we right? Are we wrong? YOU KNOW YOU WANNA WEIGH IN.

When I think of my five reasons for going to Union Hall, they rank as follows:

#1 - Alcohol, #2 - Atmosphere/Females, #3 - Shows, #4 - Food, #5 - Bocce.

I just don't get it. Bocce? What is this? An Italian neighborhood? BOCCE IS NUMBER FIVE. BEHIND FOOD.

Since Union Hall's opening back in 2006, I've spent many a spell within its bookish confines. I've smoked butts in the courtyard area. FiPS has held the occasional meeting/gathering there. I even brought my stuffed monkey to one meeting & started a lapsed column about it. One random summer night, I ended up working the door downstairs at a burlesque show, where I accidentally stamped some guy's shirt sleeve. In my defense, dude was wearing cufflinks, so he was kinda asking for it. Over time, in my dozens of visits there, I've probably ordered food two or three times. It isn't that the food's bad, It's just sort of meh...better-than-200-Fifth Bar food.

As such, until this week, I couldn't have named a damn thing on the Union Hall food menu. Early Tuesday evening, I stopped by briefly, sat at the bar and grabbed a beer. The food menu was right there and I was sick of looking at my phone, so I perused the front of the menu and flipped it over. On the back, a single item jumped out at me, an apparently recent addition to the menu: BACON ($8). The description: "A basket of crispy bacon." The bartender confirmed that said item was in fact a pile of bacon in a basket. It sounded about right. How different was it really from popcorn or mixed nuts or any other such bar snack?

Click to read more ...

GET PORKED at Landhaus

DO YOU WANNA GET PORKED???!!! Sweet! So do I!...Like ALL the time. PORKED IN THE MOUTH.

Unfortunately, as of lately I've been getting a little bored with all the places in Park Slope that I usually go to GET PORKED. That's why it's so perfect that two weeks ago Thursday Landhaus, Brooklyn's wandering pork purveyors, moved into the space occupied this past summer by People's Pops.

Landhaus has earned that "wandering" tag over the past few years by foregoing a physical space in favor of a booth at Smorgasburg & The Brooklyn Flea, and a menu served out of The Woods, a Williamsburg bar. Park Slope makes TOTAL sense for their first physical locale, as their slogan is "Farm to Sandwich." You Park Slopers love that locavore shit.

The tiny storefront space, however, is better suited for take-out due to the dearth of seating. Sure, you can sit at one of the few seats along the wall, or you can do like I did & eat off of the Ms. Pac Man machine, but if you show up on an eve where more than a half-dozen people are looking to GET PORKED in-house, you're pretty much taking that shit to go.

Click to read more ...

[Fips was there...] Bacon Takedown Takes Down My Arteries

via thetakedowns.com

We here at FIPS spend a hell of a lot of time out and about in Brooklyn, attending outdoor concerts, comedy shows and various other events. So [FIPS Was There...] is where we're gonna' talk about all this shit.

Hey guys, let's try an experiment. I'm going to say a word, and you try not to become aroused: "bacon." See! It's impossible. Even you vegans out there got a little drooly, didn't you? Last night, I partook of this most delicious of pig-derived staples at the Third Annual Brooklyn Bacon Takedown, a competition amongst the creations of 20 local chefs that bathed the Bell House in the tears of all Park Slope's vegetarians and most of greater Brooklyn's observant Jews. 

And, oh my, the bacon. I'm currently more stuffed with it than a Congressional appropriations bill (OK, I'll stop with the bacon jokes. No, I won't. There's more pig inside my belly than the precinct headquarters on donut day. Too far? I agree). Upon entry, guests were greeted with some complimentary slabs of the salty stuff provided by representatives of Hormel, the corporate sponsors (I'll Occupy Wall Street AFTER I acknowledge that the money for big, fun events has to come from somewhere, thankyouverymuch). 

Click to read more ...