The restaurant formerly known as W – located at 2812 Ocean Avenue and Avenue X – has changed its name to Le Bouchon. It’s got new owners to boot.
We’re not quite sure why the old owners decided to bail, and calls to the restaurant went unanswered. But from what we can gather with a little online research, the new guys bought into the place at the end of 2009. They kept up with the W brand until just a few weeks ago, when the new sign went up.
Just as W did, they’re pushing French and steakhouse food at upscale prices. Though we haven’t tried the food there, our favorite thing on the new menu is the “Galamâ” – a gussied up spelling of the Brooklynese pronunciation of calamari. Cute.
Everyone knows that you can lose weight by eating Subway sandwiches. But did you know if you get the right combination of bread, meat, cheese and condiments you can actually travel back in time? It’s true!
Here’s the recipe: 9-grain honey oat bread, Monterey cheddar cheese, Black Forest ham, lettuce, LSD, red onions, jalapeños, meth and chipotle sauce. Don’t forget to pick up a bag of Sun Chips… you’re going to need them where you’re going.
And now there’s a new location for you to have this sandwich carelessly slopped together with subpar ingredients (well, almost all the ingredients listed above). A Subway Restaurant is now open at 1806 1817 Avenue U, just off East 19th Street. They’ve replaced a beauty supply store that offered absolutely nothing to the time traveling community.
Is the landmarked Lundy’s building better off as a grocery store? That’s the way Crain’s New York makes it sound.
An article published over the weekend takes a look at Cherry Hill Gourmet Market nearly a year after its grand opening. What they found is a thriving business that they say locals need more than another restaurant. And maybe they’re right, which could have powerful implications on the Sheepshead Bay Special Zoning District, the law that determines what kind of businesses can operate on the Emmons Avenue waterfront.
Owners of the commercial development sprouting up at 30 Dooley Street told Sheepshead Bites that they’ve signed leases with a restaurant and beer garden and a “hot yoga” spa.
Benjamin Klein, of Klein Levin Associates, which developed and owns the property, said the building is just a few weeks away from completion, and expects a certificate of occupancy following inspections.
The restaurant and beer garden will take up the basement level of the four-unit property, and will have its own separate entrance on Dooley Street.
The top floor is booked for a Bikram Yoga spa. Also known as hot yoga, stretches are practiced in a room heated to 105°F with a humidity of 40 percent. The top floor of the building is a loft-style unit, with views overlooking the Sheepshead Bay marina.
Klein said two more 2,000 square foot units are still available, both with balconies and waterfront views. The building has attendant parking for 18 cars.
Restaurant Sabor Latino may not be open yet, but it’s already causing us to drool in anticipation of its Latin rotisserie chicken. Obviously signage is up at 3715 Nostrand Avenue, and they recently requested permission to serve booze. No one answered the phone, so we’re not yet sure when they’ll be opening doors.
The location was previously occupied by Metro Electronics, a computer and television repair shop.
Calabrese Pizza & Restaurant is slated to begin serving up brick oven pizza at 2224 Avenue U very soon, it seems. The dough-tossers tossed up their signage just a few days ago.
We’re wishing them the best, because it seems like the storefront may be cursed. Remember Tai Yuan? Well, then you’ve got a good memory for short-lived businesses of total insignificance. They occupied the spot for just a few weeks before shutting down in April. And before that was Tai Shan, which lived a little longer, but still didn’t amount to more than a blip on the local gastronomical scene.
Good luck, Calabrese. The area needs some brick ovens, and hopefully you’ll wrangle a name for yourself as one of the few to service the niche. Then again, we also need some Thai…
Anyone who has stopped by Roll-N-Roaster this week probably got accosted by four or five people trying to jam cake, champagne and orange juice down their throat. And at least two kids we saw were horrified by an employee’s attempt to make them balloon animals. But it’s all in the name of fun.
Why fun? Roll-N-Roaster is celebrating its 40th Anniversary. And in addition to the week-long giveaways, they’re throwing a party this weekend and offering some “buy one, get one” roast beef specials. Borough President Marty Markowitz himself is getting in on the action by proclaiming July 17 “Roll-N-Roaster Day.”
On July 17 and 18, the store will have face painting, magic, balloons, cotton candy, anniversary cake, cocktails and “roses for the ladies.”
New York Times published an appetite-whetting article about local clam bars, beginning with a conversation between strangers at Randazzo’s counter (2017 Emmons Avenue). The writer, Sam Sifton, artfully runs readers through the four types of clams, a slew of New York City-area clam bars, and the culture of the clam. For those who, like me, got turned on to raw clams only recently, it’s a great and romantic introduction to the topic, full of imagery and reverence deserving of the under-appreciated food. On a hot day, a beer and a platter of raw clams along a waterfront – any waterfront, but especially our waterfront – is a slice of beach-town paradise. For me, like Sifton, clams have become a blessed escape from clamor.
Located on the border of Sheepshead Bay and Marine Park, Pizzeria Del Corso (3003 Avenue U) is a neighborhood secret waiting to be exposed to the world’s pizza connoisseurs.
Village Voice readers couldn't figure out what this was or where it came from. It's Turkish octopus casserole from Marmaris. - Photo courtesy of Village Voice
We live here, so we know all about Sheepshead Bay’s hidden culinary gems. There are the little bodegas with back-room burritos, the strangely decorated bars on quiet side streets with staggeringly cheap lunches, and the waterfront eateries that manage to go below radar. There are food carts that survive despite rhyme or reason (a hot dog cart by Doody’s? Really?), and dim sum dining where we don’t know what we’re ordering. There’s fried chicken where a sweatshop used to be, and a bagel place that’s been there so long no one knows what came before.
These are our treasures, and they’re known only to us locals.
That was, at least, until Village Voice’s Robert Sietsema began plundering our neighborhood a few weeks ago. Several of the venerable food critic’s recent pieces have eyed the nabe’s gastronomical glories. And all of them sing our praises.
