Brooklyn By Night
"Are we in the boonies of Brooklyn?" my friend nervously asked.
We were driving along Ocean Parkway, heading for Pomme de Terre, and she was fearful. The restaurant is located in Ditmas Park, which is a part of Flatbush, where few non-Brooklynites have ventured since the Dodgers abandoned Ebbets Field long ago.
In her 22 years of living in New York, she told me, she’d been to the borough fewer than two dozen times, mostly to visit the Brooklyn Academy of Music. In those kinds of places, the turf war is between the first and second violins.
She calmed down after we parked near a perfectly painted bistro with an irresistibly cute blue-and-yellow door, located on the corner of a tree-lined street. “Sycamores!” she exclaimed. “If we were in France, people would be playing pétanque under them.” Except we were in Flatbush, on a brutally hot Sunday evening, and kids were romping under fire-hydrant spray.
This newly opened bistro, sister restaurant to the well-regarded Farm on Adderley (located a subway stop away), was jammed, and remained that way throughout the evening. It has clearly become, in not much more than a month, one of those eating spots destined to anchor and uplift a neighborhood—not that Ditmas Park is really very scary at all.
There’s a perfectly conceived four-stool bar in the front of the dining room, although it’s not as alluring as one might wish. The gray-haired women perched there may well have been unwinding from an afternoon at Loehmann’s. “That is the unsexiest bar in New York,” another friend who joined us pointed out. The interior is bistro-cliché, right down to a tin roof and painted replicas of recognizable French posters. Still, of all the too-familiar themes in dining, almost none are more comforting than classic bistro, especially when the place promises to provide what it calls “well-loved food.”
A few of the dishes are reason enough to make the trek (on the Q train if you’re coming from Manhattan). The Steak Frites Au Poivre might be the best under-$20 beef dish in New York, and it looked to me that at least half the customers ordered it. The strip steak was thick, tender, juicy, peppery, and cooked precisely to order. When I decided it was probably a fantastic accident, getting a steak that satisfying for $19, I returned a week later and got one just as good. The dining room the second night was a study in breeziness, doors and windows thrown open to let in cool, dry air—try finding authentic oxygen in a Manhattan restaurant.
Meat dishes are particularly appealing here, even if a dry-aged ribeye, ordered very rare, came medium-well. The skin on our duck confit could have been crisper, but the meat was flawless and an accompanying smoked duck sausage more than satisfying. A croque monsieur sandwich—essentially grilled ham-and-cheese—was tasty but so overstuffed another friend described it as “Katz’s goes to Paris.” Skate was cooked exactly right, but the beefy-tasting croutons piled on top reminded me of stuffing for a Thanksgiving turkey.
The wine list is filled with obscure bottlings that I cannot fairly describe as finds, although a lighter style ‘05 Cahors ($28) was a perfect summer red. Salads are overdressed and vegetables seem basically an afterthought, although the fries, as bistro fries should be, are thin and crisp. The butter is made in-house, a terrific touch. Service isn’t particularly proficient, but it’s friendly and there’s lots of it.
I tried four desserts: an apple tart Tatin with a crust that would have gotten a French pastry chef guillotined; a rather dry chocolate mousse topped with a few grains of sea salt—swell-tasting but painfully intellectual; a warm chocolate cake with a near-melted center that reinforced my theory that very good chocolate is used here; and a lush, caramelized banana-caramel pot de crème that contends for best $5 dessert in New York.
You’ve probably figured out by now that menu prices are low. Cauliflower soup topped with olive oil and laced with crunchy shrimp must be the finest $5 soup in New York.
I asked our waiter—who assured us that his many tattoos did not denote local gang affiliation—how far we were from the sections of Flatbush not as user-friendly as Ditmas Park. He told us we need not worry, inasmuch as the worst of Flatbush was easily “a few blocks away.” My final advice for your visit to Pomme de Terre: Don’t just drive safely when returning home. Also drive in the right direction.
1301 Newkirk Avenue, Brooklyn, NY; 718-284-0005; pdtny.com
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talk about cliches! well-dressed white guy fears for his life in dodgy Brooklyn neighborhood! what will those GQ guys think of next???
reviews of pomme de terre inevitably dump on newkirk avenue--hardly the champs elysee--but but how is it possible to miss the fact that the surrounding blocks in both directions boast some of the most picturesque Victorian housing stock in the city?
brooklynista
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Right on Brooklynista! I'm just as tired as you are of reading what seem to be honest accounts and rave reviews of the food at Pomme de Terre, yet make the reviewer sound like some glorified intrepid conquistador discovering a new land that is full of gangs and danger. tattoos and danger and outer borough oh my! My guess is his Manhattan lady who has only been to BAM isn't even from New York City. Seriously if reviews like this keep up the notion of non-BrooklynHts/CobbleHill/ParkSlope being so dangerous, there's going to be a backlash and a rebellion. There are definitely some bad wasteland parts of Brooklyn. Newkirk Ave definitely has far to go to compete with Smith St. But give us a break - the majority of people living in the neighborhood are old-timers or new parents and we're decidedly NOT doing drive-bys! GEESH!
brooklyngirlfromqns
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Anyone who reads Alan, who has been the food critic at GQ for decades, would know that YES he speaks with humor in mind. And did you notice that it's actually a positive review? Food lovers reading this will be motivated to get off their lazy butts and go to the restaurant. I don't see why you commenters have to be such a bunch of haters. Alan has always been an advocate of going to the boroughs and in fact to foreign countries like Turkey and Japan to get a good meal. Kudos to him.
tipsyheels
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"Dont just drive safely when returning home. Also drive in the right direction"
Was this REALLY necessary? I don't agree that this was just in good humor. I just moved to Flatbush from Fort Greene where some bad neighborhoods were really close by and nobody would ever say this in a restaurant review. I guess I should be glad that this review will keep the Manhattanites away because they will be too scared. And I can keep eating at Pomme de Terre without having to deal with tourists.
brooklyn_girl
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I've lived in Victorian Flatbush for 28 years. My beautiful house has never been burglarized, and no one in my family has ever been mugged or hassled. The nabe comments in the review are typical of Manhattanites and Brownstone Brooklynites - I guess it makes them feel better about where they live to make derogatory comments about somewhere else. I ignore them. Pomme de Terre is an absolutely wonderful restaurant. Another reason why there is little reason to leave the nabe. BTW, did you know that De Fara's Pizza, acknowledged to be the best pizza in NYC, is even further from the brownstones than we are? Good Grief!!
evfred
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I'm all for reviewers coming to my neighborhood. Its just when a 1970's stereotype of Flatbush is published in a national magazine that we brooklynites take offense. Kudos to Alan for taking the towncar out to Central Brooklyn and helping put a great restaurant on the map. But too bad he didn't at the very least google the neighborhood and see that the area has changed dramatically. He could have also walked around the hood for 15 minutes to realize how safe it feels. I just think its lazy sloppy journalism.
argyle_road
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Kudos to Alan for trekking out to the "boonies." His piece stirs up understandable neighborhood sentiment. Ditmas Park residents have been working very hard over the last couple of decades to make their community better. Now many houses go for 1 to 2 million. And the bordering 'hoods may be dirty but they are hardly as bad as people think. His attention to a great restaurant outside the Island is appreciated. Besides, he does say that DP isn't very scary and you can actually get some fresh air here. And who opens a French Restaurant in a bad neighborhood, anyway? Ditmas Park rocks, so come on over!
rigel2100
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seriously, would he be making these comments about the hood if he was reviewing a restaurant on 105th and broadway (or even in the high 90's?)? Walk 2 blocks in the wrong direction there and you can get yourself mugged. Actually, the actual bad part of that area is a lot more than a "few" blocks away, more like half a mile. Aside from the yuppies living in million$+++++ victorians (and their predecessors who bought there 30 years ago) the area is heavily orthodox jewish and pakistani. hardly drive by shooting material.
as for the waiter with a tatoo...aside from big deal, sunday school teachers have tatoos, I don't remember anyone like that the three times I've eaten there, but given that some of the neighborhood activists were complaining that the waitstaff was too lilly white out of kansas and such, i think maybe that's a figment of the writer's imagination.
anyway, there's a reason the bistro opened up. there's a need for some nice restaurants there. yuppies (myself included) who have plunked down $1 million+ for our 7 bedroom victorians want some more local places to eat!
brooklynme
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I bought an apartment in Ditmas Park after being gentrified out of hipster Brooklyn and it's the nicest neighborhood I've ever lived in. Block after block of beautiful landmarked Victorian mansions and flowers and trees. It's beyond me how anyone could visit the neighborhood and not be amazed that they are in Brooklyn or even in New York City. It's like an oasis of greenery, politeness and quiet. Oh well, one man's "boonies" is a single girl's real estate bargain.
kinditmas
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