[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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[What You Should Order At...] The Roof

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.

Did y'all folks realize that Whole Foods is God's gift to man? It's true. Just look it up on the internet.

As such, we Brooklynites are blessed. Back in December, we found God & the long, bloody reign of Food Coop terror came to an end. We finally got our Whole Foods. Years before that glorious day, we knew that this first ever Brooklyn Whole Foods, situated yards from a Superfund site, would be the most Brooklyny Whole Foods EVA. When it opened, we saw the tons of local BROOKLYN vendors & products. We flinched at the questionable knife-sharpening station. We applauded the Whole Foods creative team for choosing the name "The Roof" for their rooftop bar. SO BROOKLYN. Then we tried to find the entrance to said rooftop bar. We walked through the whole fucking store before finding the entrance.

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[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?

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[What You Should Order At...] Pickle Shack

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.

OH, MAN. When your best friend asks you if you'd like to "go to Pickle Shack," are you concerned that you're about to cross some sort of sexual boundary? Do you instantly cover your most delicate orifice?

You should be slightly worried, because it sounds like your friend is a bit of an opportunistic perv. What you shouldn’t be worried about, despite the fact that your "totally supportive" friend is "totally scheming" on ways to "bed you," is what you should get to eat at Pickle Shack, because that's where you're ending up tonight.

The scenario: You and your "friend" go to Pickle Shack. You've had a long day at work. Gothamist and its intelligent commenters didn't seem to care for your story about the hot, new, organic TOTALLY BROOKLYN restaurant that's replacing that SO IMPORTANT Brooklyn institution whose TOTALLY SAD death you're trying to derive page clicks from. Also, in his Monday post, John Del Signore made a clever comment that slyly mocked your winter boots but also took a shot at de Blasio. Is it clever? Is it mean? CONFLICT. The answer is booze.

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[What You Should Order At…] Nahm Thai Kitchen

Two words: Vegetarian Duck.

For someone who doesn’t eat meat, there’s no greater delicacy than vegetarian duck (also known as mock duck ). It’s basically a seitan concoction that is stewed in a shit-ton of soy sauce and MSG. When my husband and I lived in Chelsea, we would get our fix at a place called Home on Eighth that has since closed. When we were childless and he worked in the East Village, we would go to Pukk. Now that we live in Park Slope, and don’t venture further than the 3^rd Street playground, we go to Nahm. I’m sorry, that was misleading. I should have said Nahm comes to us. We’ve never actually been inside. 

The Nahm menu features every classic Thai dish an American has come to expect. But here’s where they set themselves apart: every entree can be ordered with…you guessed it…VEGETARIAN DUCK! So the vegetarian never, ever feels left out. Your friend’s calling in an order of Sweet and Sour Beef? Ha! No problem! You order the Sweet and Sour VD! Your parents are in town and want Peanut Curry with Chicken?  Fine! You get Peanut Curry with VD! Your ex-girlfriend tempts you with spicy noodles and shrimp? You’ll show her with spicy noodles and your VD!

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