This Celebrate Brooklyn Food Menu Will Rock Your Face Off

Oh, where to begin?

We here at FiPS have been granted exclusive preview access to the food menu that Tom Kearney, the chef at The Farm on Adderley in Ditmas Park, has prepared for Celebrate Brooklyn. I am so damned excited to eat this delicious food that I feel like I'm going to...well, I don't know exactly what I might do, but whatever it may be, it's definitely a manifestation of the fact that I am spectacularly excited.

In case you haven't left the Slope in several years, you might not know the one of the best reasons to get on an outbound Q train is to go to Ditmas Park and eat at The Farm on Adderley.  The food isn't just local, sustainable and thoughtfully prepared -- it's also magnificently delicious.  Fortunately for you, The Farm is in charge of the menu for Celebrate Brooklyn going on the second year in a row, so Slopers can stay in the 'hood and eat this mouthwatering fare.

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The Dog Days of Summer

Let's get one thing clear. Four dollars for a hot dog is friggin' ridiculous. Luckily, I'm a semi-privileged white male with no sense of economic smarts, so I often find myself having a dog or two at Bark. This Saturday, they’re expanding their reach beyond Park Slope, returning to Brooklyn Bridge Pier 6 and heading to Manhattan for the first time with a stand at The High Line. The High Line locale works out great, as tourists are TOTALLY cool with paying four dollars for a hot dog.

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A FiPS Guide to Great GoogaMooga Fooda

It's Great GoogaMooga week, bitches! To prepare you for the upcoming 2-day food, wine and music orgy festival, we here at FiPS are going to be talking about it nonstop from now 'til Saturday.

Yeah, motherfucker! Are you ready to stuff your face, GoogaMooga style? Good luck with that. If you're spending next weekend at the Great GoogaMooga Festival, the two-day Prospect Park event dubbed as "an amusement park of food & drink," you're obviously not doing so for the music. It's all about the food. I mean, sure there's a James Murphy DJ set and a performance by The Roots -- but Hall & Oates as a headliner? That shit's LAME (Ed note: Some of your fellow FiPS writers would disagree, Shawn).

Maybe you were one of those lucky enough to score a free ticket to the event. Maybe you even forked over dough via Craigslist to get your hands on one. If so, you'll have access to food & drink from 75 food vendors, 30 brewers & 30 wine makers. Whether you'll have to wait in ridiculous lines over & over again is yet to be seen. Personally, I'm assuming CLUSTERFUCK.

At this point, if you weren't able to score a ticket, you do have the option of spending that extra $250 you have lying around on an ExtraMooga pass. With it, you get VIP access to as much food & drink as you can handle, alongside events such as a discussion about food & music with Ruth Reichel, Aziz Ansari, James Murphy and David Chang, and multiple Q&A's with Anthony Bourdain. There's even a Gatsby-themed brunch.

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The Divisiveness of Artisanal Mayo

Sam Mason / Photo by Melissa Hom, Grub Street

Let's say you're this hotshot chef. You've got a degree from Johnson & Wales. You've been a pastry chef at wd-50. You've had a hip restaurant in SoHo AND opened a bar in Williamsburg. You've got your own show on IFC where you serve dinner to indie bands -- a show that you claim to have landed because the creators googled "tattooed hipster chef." You've set up a booth at Smorgasburg where you sell artisan mayo.

What's the next logical step?

OBVIOUSLY it's to further your artisanal mayo empire by opening a storefront/kitchen lab in Prospect Heights & calling it "Empire Mayonnaise."

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[Review'd] Casa Ventura

Some people don't believe in ghosts & curses. Personally, The Blair Witch Project & the face melting scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark really freak my shit out. Tell me a story about how your roommate's friend saw a little girl sitting at the end of his bed one stormy night and I'll get radiating chills up & down my body as I imagine awaking to the same spectral sight.

The folks behind Casa Ventura, the new Latin American restaurant on 7th Ave & 3rd St that opens for dinner tonight in the former Barrio Barrio Plates Mix space, have no need for such supernatural tomfoolery. Sure the space has gone through some rapid changes recently. Sure it seemed like things were a bit askew a few weeks back. After sitting down with Avi Kravitz & Courtney Ebner (two of the partners in the business) and then trying the food last night at their opening event, all signs point to them ending whatever bad mojo had taken over the space.

The story of Casa Ventura starts back in the days of Barrio, when Jose Ventura (Casa Ventura's director of operations & fearless leader) and Devonna Middeleer (his wife) worked there. Avi & Courtney lived just upstairs and would always be in for dinner. After a while they struck up a friendship. Fast forward a few years, when the owner of Barrio offered to sell the place to Jose. He jumped at the opportunity & soon after, the two couples were in business together.

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