Results tagged “buttermilkchannel”

The well-regarded and homey Carroll Gardens restaurant Buttermilk Channel was broken into sometime last night. Owner Doug Crowell was contacted by his security alarm company at 5:30 a.m. and arrived at the scene to find nothing stolen or vandalized. This year has been marked by a spree of overnight restaurant robberies in Manhattan, and post-closure B&Es seem to be on the rise in Brooklyn as well: last month Papacito's in Greenpoint was robbed of $10,000 a few hours after the final enchilada of the night was served. In Carroll Gardens, Ackerman, Buttermilk Channel's mascot goldfish (right), has long left the building (in an All Goldfish Go to Heaven kind of way), so it is thought there are no reliable witnesses to the incident at this time. Buttermilk Channel owner Doug Crowell recently tweeted that he was still "waiting for detectives to come" to take some fingerprints, but in the meantime, has been "eating some Cato Corner cheeses" to pass the time.

The former Caffé Carciofo space on the corner of Court and Kane Streets in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn will soon open as new restaurant Watty and Meg. Court Street residents have noted a flurry of construction, and a Craigslist call for line cooks went out over the weekend. What we know: The restaurant will have 60 seats and feature an open kitchen; it also seems that its name comes from a ballad generally attributed to 18th century Scottish-American ornithologist Alexander Wilson, for whom The Wilson Journal of Ornithology is named. Ah, mystery. Thus Watty and Meg joins the roster of new Court Street restaurants with archaic names, like Buttermilk Channel and Café Pedlar, both of which have started strong. More details to follow as they become available.

This week the Times's Frank Bruni opines on the new location of Kefi, the insaaaanely cheap Upper West Side Mediterranean restaurant from chef Michael Psilakis (Anthos, Mia Dona, Friend of Gothamist). Bruni admits he's a big fan of Psilakis, but doesn't pull punches in this surprisingly mixed review, in which he complains of "palate mononucleosis" from "runaway saltiness." And "while most dishes are satisfying in a hyper-robust way, some have at least one and usually two ingredients too many." Ultimately, Bruni thinks Kefi used to be cool, back at the original location: "There, many of the same dishes were executed with more precision and restraint. It was a lesser stage, but it was a greater one."

This week the Times's Frank Bruni gives some love to Buttermilk Channel (photos) in Carroll Gardens, where, "although one in three dishes widely misses its mark and the restaurant’s reach frequently exceeds its grasp, there’s the possibility of a terrific meal. There’s the probability of a pleasant one... Buttermilk Channel is a restaurant of real standards, noteworthy ambition and uncommon slavishness to trends. It’s laudable and predictable in equal measures. And it was packed every time I went." The bulk of the review is dedicated to Bruni's lust for their pecan pie sundae.

This week Frank Bruni at the Times tells Zak Pelaccio (Fatty Crab) to get his shit together at the West Village's Cabrito: "On its best nights and judged by its best dishes, Cabrito is the Mexican restaurant so many of us dreamed about for so long. It has just enough sophistication and upscale trappings, manifest in the quality of its cocktails and length of its tequila and mezcal list, to be the plausible cynosure of a fun night out, not just a grubby refueling station where the price of dauntless, authentic flavors is a spartan atmosphere." BUT: "Cabrito is afflicted by an inconsistency that’s puzzling, even maddening. There are dishes that don’t seem, by nature, to rise to the caliber of others, and dishes that aren’t dependable from one visit to the next."

       

Buttermilk Channel, a new Carroll Gardens bistro, opens tomorrow night. Owner Doug Crowell, a former manager of Blue Water Grill, thinks that people in the neighborhood who stop in for a bite to eat might notice some familiar touches in the newly completed dining room. “We bought a lot of things from stoop sales, cleaned them up, and used them here,” he said today. A giant suspension spring from an old truck on the bar attests to that fact. Elsewhere, parts of the restaurant have seemingly been assembled from bits and pieces of old Brooklyn: in the center of the room is a long communal table that was made from ceiling beams reclaimed from a Red Hook warehouse. The same craftsman who made the table also put together Buttermilk Channel’s pegged butcher-block bar.

For our second Thanksgiving recipe, we hand you over to Doug Crowell and Ryan Angulo, owner and chef (respectively) of the soon to open Buttermilk Channel in Carroll Gardens. Angulo was most recently chef de cuisine at The Stanton Social and is accustomed to tinkering with American standards— Stanton Social executive chef Chris Santos famously makes Chinese soup dumplings out of French onion soup, and corn dogs out of crab cakes. Ryan Angulo’s recipe included here is a variation on the time-tested and traditional baked-yam-and-marshmallow casserole extravaganza. He says the inclusion coconut milk, chestnuts and cranberries only add depth to the dish.

NewYorkology has its eye on the high seas Buttermilk Channel today, reporting on Puccini's Il Tabarro which will be staged there next month. The Brooklyn waterfront will host four evenings of the opera in September, "aboard a retired fuel tanker tied up to the dock at the container port."

We at the Gothamist network would like to express our heartfelt wishes to the people of Minnesota in the days after their tragic bridge collapse. We're not trying to discount the severity of the accident by making note of it in opposition to our usual -Ist lightheartedness - we just wanted to take a moment and recognize those affected last week.

Yesterday, the odd news about the NYPD's arrest of three men involved with an egg-shaped submarine near the Queen Mary 2, off the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, revealed that a Brooklyn artist was behind the whole benign operation. Police Commissioner called artist Duke Riley's stunt "marine mischief," adding that the "creative craft of three adventuresome individuals" did "not pose any terrorist threat."

A Sunday NY Times roundup of development and community planning process in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn contains this hidden threat:

The money quote is from the Red Hook Gowanus Chamber of Commerce lawyer, Michael Hiller, "Having well-heeled residential condo owners complaining about noise from the port is a recipe for absolute chaos." Yeah, well, that well-heeled, complaining condo owners hasn't stopped other developments in Brooklyn, which is probably why Federman is reportedly "confident" about the restraining order being lifted. Here are Gothamits's posts on Red Hook (like how it's safer, how there's a farm, how a taxi plunged into the water). And you want to talk Red Hook real estate development? Check out Curbed's Red Hook coverage.

And Gothamist's favorite use of the word stevedore came in a Season 4 episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer; it's disturbing, yet the only time we've heard the word "stevedore" uttered out loud.

What IS the correct description for that part of New York City waterways that is south of the Battery Park, north of the Statue of Liberty, east of New Jersey, and west of Brooklyn that contains Governor�s Island? Upper New York Harbor? Tidal Basin? What do you call that water?