To be honest, we've been to Palo Santo several times over the past year. We even took our mother there for her birthday. It's a gorgeous setting, with all the beauty of urban decay and none of the dirt. The talented chef, Jacques Gautier, made those tables of found wood and assorted interesting objects himself. The very cobblestones built into the restaurant's striking exterior were salvaged from nearby 5th Avenue, where they had been unearthed and then tossed aside by Con Ed. more ›

It’s not enough for a chef to just make food anymore. In this age when diners want to know more and more where the food comes from, what’s the next step? Demanding the origin of the restaurant’s furniture? At Cookshop, the seats are made of sustainably raised American oak. At Sparky’s Manhattan outpost, the tables are eco-friendly pressed board. But at the new Palo Santo on Union Street in Park Slope, the chef, Jacques Gautier, went so far as to make the furniture himself. Gautier set out to create a place that would be as welcoming as stepping into a friend’s living room. So he fashioned the wooden tables and chairs himself, working with a carpenter whom he has now trained as his sous-chef too. He calls the menu “eclectic Latin.” It takes the Greenmarket ethic and injects some cool—his last gig was in Williamsburg—that this neighborhood could definitely use. more ›