Berg'n: The Great Takeover?

Full Disclosure: I've yet to see Guardians of the Galaxy. I couldn't care less. I know. Amazing Marvel adaptation. Bradley Cooper plays a Raccoon. Vin Diesel revisits the role he's become famous for...a talking tree. I get it. The Guardians are a ragtag group guardianing our galaxy or some shit. There's an orb. Somebody wants to take over. There's always somebody who wants to take over.

Google wants to take over the internet. Transplants want to take over Park Slope. ISIS wants to take over pretty much everywhere. In the Brooklyn culinary sphere, the boom of hipsters & depression over the past decade has led to beer halls taking over the Brooklyn landscape. It's no ebola-sized infection, but in terms of square footage that I'm not willing to research & calculate, it's still notable.

I think back to 2008. Lil Wayne's The Carter III was about to sell a million copies in week one. WEEZY TAKING OVER. In this climate, Jonathan Butler & Eric Demby decided to start some thang in Ft Greene called the Brooklyn Flea. They added food. Locals flocked. Hipsters flocked. Six years later, they've become the guys behind a flea empire that expanded to Williamsburg & DUMBO, added "Smorgasbrewery" events at Brooklyn Brewery, expanded to D.C., failed in Philly & took over the Park Slope market at PS 321. Now, a half year after the initial anticipated March opening date, they've joined forces with the beer hall movement to open Berg'n, a Crown Heights beer hall on fuck you guess which street.

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[What You Should Order At...] Prospect Bar & Grill

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-area eatery and recommend our favorite dish. Are we right? Are we wrong? YOU KNOW YOU WANNA WEIGH IN.

There was this one weekend evening a few months back when I was hanging out at Prospect Bar & Grill with the lady friend. Twas early. We were sitting inside enjoying a beverage & perusing the menu, way too hungry & wondering what’d actually be worth consuming there. I was feeling particularly Brooklyn, so I went with the Kale Caesar Salad ($10) with Medium-Rare Steak ($4). As we sipped craft beers (Singlecut or Smuttynose or some shit) & waited for our food, the bar buzzed around us with mostly non-obnoxious folks. Twas the weekend.

The food arrived. The lady friend had a burger. I had my kale salad. We were comfortable with our respective gender roles. I dug the fuck into my kale salad, quickly turning my attention to the steak within. I was eager. I took a big bite. I hadn't chewed it properly. No problem. Previously, I'd been able to effectively work through my inability to properly chew my food. A little bit of water down the throat...lift the arms & open up the diaphragm...down slides the hastily-eaten foodstuffs...problem solved.

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Get Ready for a Doughnut Orgasm in Your Mouth

Photo via Doughnut Plant's Instagram

On today, National Doughnut Day, it is important that we all reflect on the brave, historic journey depicted in Homer's Odyssey. There's much to be learned from the classic Greek epic, which centers on the patriarch of the Simpson family returning home from Shelbyville after his quest to find the perfect doughnut. The important lesson? Doughnuts are important. People should die for them.

I'm still on a quest for the perfect doughnut myself. After growing up on Dunkin Donuts, when traveling down South one summer in the early 00's, I came across my first glazed Krispy Kreme doughnut & was all "OH...Dunkin Donuts doughnuts are actually kinda lame." Since then, I've been exposed to Tim Horton's. I skipped Voodoo Doughnuts in Portland, OR because fuck that line but I have no doubt that their doughnuts are good. I read so on the internet. Here in Brooklyn, I've never had a bad doughnut from Peter Pan or Dough.

Now word's come out via Twitter that the much-heralded Doughnut Plant, with one location in the LES & one in Chelsea, is coming to Flatbush Ave in October, taking over the former Yummy Taco space & putting them right in the heart of the food boom around Barclays Center. Twenty years after he started baking in a LES tenement basement, owner Mark Isreal is finally crossing the bridge to cash in on those sweet Brooklyn benjamins.

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The Barclays Area is About to Get a Little Sweeter

Photo via Sugar Factory

Back in March of 2010, when construction first began on the Barclays Center, developers swore up & down that once the arena opened up, the local economy was TOTALLY going to boom! Businesses in the surrounding area would be FLOODED with arena-goers. Real estate magnate Michael Pintchik, who owns a number of buildings surrounding Barclays, was going to make bank by bringing new & exciting businesses to his properties. Neighborhood REVITALIZATION!

Flash forward to 2014 and, almost two years after the rusty stadium first opened, it hasn't exactly panned out that way. Sure there's a Shake Shack slated to open up soon in a Pintchik building on Flatbush across from the arena, but Shake Shack does not a neighborhood make. In the last few days though, there've been a few announcements that hint at things picking up in the area.

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Food is Art: Saul at The Brooklyn Museum

Food is life. Food is politics. Food is love. Food is the new rock. Food is food is food is food is food.

Andy Warhol had his bananas & soup cans. Food is art. MOMA has Warhols. MOMA also has The Modern, the restaurant from Danny Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group that opened back in 2004 and is helmed (for now) by Gabriel Kreuther. Over the years, they've received a Michelin star and two and three star reviews from The New York Times.

Not to be outdone by its Manhattan counterpart, today The Brooklyn Museum opens Saul, the newest incarnation of the Michelin-starred restaurant that held court on Smith St. for the last fourteen years before closing down in July and upgrading to new digs just off the museum lobby, where the Museum Cafe once stood.

It's the next in a continuing tradition of improvements for Saul. Pete Wells, in his 2009 two-star review of the restaurant, described Saul's then ten-year journey as one where Saul and Lisa Bolton were "(l)ike couples in a starter apartment, they dressed the place up as money came in." Ten years later, where there were once "thick plates from Fishs Eddy," there was now "white Bernadaud china." Since then, Saul Bolton has gone on to open The Vanderbilt and Red Gravy in Prospect Heights. Now Saul's come to join them in the 'hood.

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