Recent Eats III

Some of these eats are not really "recent" anymore. But that's the way it goes. If I posted them in a timely fashion, I'd never have room to post anything else. (Which could be a good thing? We'll take a poll later.)

Chez Oskar
Nice local bistro. Hard to give a real review, since we were there for a set menu -- didn't get the full experience. Still, had a very tasty lamb shank and the atmosphere was pleasantly romantic.

Gaonnuri
I'd say it's all about the view, but frankly the meat was pretty good too. I mean, why have Korean BBQ on ground level when you can do it on the 39th floor, all things being equal?

Lobster Joint
I sometimes say that if I won the lottery, the only thing that would really change would be that I would eat more lobster rolls. That may not be strictly true, but the point stands. In any event, since I'm unlikely to either win the lottery or move to Maine, I do the best I can with what I have. The $12 slider special at Lobster Joint helps.

Midwood Flats
This is a recent eat in the sense that it is always a recent eat, since this place is directly across the street from our apartment. We were suspicious of it at first, I don't know why, but the switch flipped as soon as we went in. A duck torta with a fried egg on top may not be the only path to my heart, but it'll certainly get you there. The great beer selection can certainly come along for the ride.

Parkside Pizza
Lamb sausage pizza, olive pizza. Promising-looking cocktails.

Oaxaca Taqueria
This place fills a very particular need: Close enough to swing into before BAM and pick up food that we can eat while we see a movie. There isn't a lot of competition in this category, but I'm satisfied with Oaxaca for now. Their flavors are good, but as is so often the case they suffer a bit with layout. People eat their burritos from one side or the other, so ingredients need to be layered, like in a proper paté. You can't have one end be sausage and the other end potato. Take pride in your burritos! This is especially an issue when you're sharing burritos back and forth, as R and I tend to do.

Grindhaus
This place was on my "to try" list for a while. Sadly, it did not make the jump to any kind of recommended list. It's not that the food was bad, but it wasn't mind-blowing, and I am extremely unwilling to pay, for example, $23 for a teacup-sized portion of non-mind-blowing gnocchi.

Brooklyn Bell's The Local
It's 60F; it's February; it's ice cream time. Prospect Heights has no shortage of ice cream, with Ample Hills on Vanderbilt, Blue Marble on Underhill, and now The Local on Classon. I'll make an argument for any of them, but this latest addition may currently have the largest portion of my heart. They make only very small batches -- a tub or two at a time, and then it's on to something else. When we showed up the options were: vanilla, black lava caramel, banana bread, bananas foster (an unplanned bananza, apparently), some kind of pecan brittle with pretzels and rice krispies (I don't remember the exact name, but I had it, and it was good)... and three other things. Sorry, not great reportage here. But the owner/ice cream creator served us -- I think it's basically just him and his wife running the place -- and we came away with an impression of a very short supply chain and deep attention to detail.

And a special shoutout to Trader Joe's peanut-butter-filled pretzels, the ones with salt: my constant office companion.

MAP

RECIPE: Mushroom Moussaka. A misleading name, because only some of the lamb is replaced with mushrooms, yielding a slightly lighter, cheaper, healthier dish.