Il Leone is just one of several great new places in Park Slope.
Illustration: Naomi Otsu
Welcome to Grub Street’s rundown of restaurant recommendations that aims to answer the endlessly recurring question: Where should we go? These are the spots that our food team thinks everyone should visit, for any reason (a new chef, the arrival of an exciting dish, or maybe there’s an opening that’s flown too far under the radar). This month: lunch from some Blue Hill vets, Vietnamese that isn’t to be missed, and Park Slope — really! — gets some great new spots.
Pangat (Park Slope)
A great Indian restaurant in Park Slope? Before Unapologetic Foods parked its phuchka on Fifth Avenue, this was a fantasy. Now, Masalawala & Sons has some competition: That restaurant’s former chef de cuisine defected to open this restaurant with his wife Aarati and Joe Liao, who ran Curry Mee in this same space. The dining room has a charmingly half-finished, thrown-together feel: There’s a counter that’s leftover from the space’s past life as a Japanese restaurant, which is also why one wall is split between The Great Wave Off Kanagawa and an original mural of traditional Warli art. On a recent Friday, the place was buzzing with the enthusiasm of friends gossiping over bowls of Schezwan noodles and military-style goat biryani. (They were fueled by BYO bottles of wine and beer.) The menu is peppered with effusive descriptors (“the O.G. Mumbai munch,” “kokum-kissed coastal bliss,” “umami overload”), and service is chatty and informal. “You ordered all my favorite dishes,” a server told us before explaining that he got conscripted into helping out on weekends by his wife. The specials that night included a chile paneer, just as saucy as it should be, and a fragrant and fiery chicken koliwada served on a banana leaf. On Sundays, Aarati hosts what they call “the Pangat village lunch experience,” serving Marathi cuisine. Reservations are required for the 30 available slots, and they host only one seating so that people can linger and, hopefully, make new friends. —Chris Crowley
All of Our Picks, Mapped
Il Leone (Park Slope)
Il Leone, the cult import from Maine that just took over the Bar Vinazo space on Seventh Avenue, has quickly risen up to the top of Park Slope’s restaurant hierarchy. The pizza restaurant from chef Ben Wexler-Waite retains the bar feel, with only a handful of tables and a single pizza oven. (The backyard is large, but no one took them up on the offer to sit under heaters on a recent night.) The hot-ticket item — the Isola lobster pizza — was also sold out that night, but the seasonal cherry-tomato L’estate pie stood out just fine with its tangy, bright sauce. The menu is short; it’s almost safer to think of it as a bar with an excellent negroni that just so happens to serve excellent, slightly unique pies. They also have a wonderful espresso–chocolate chunk gelato, but the dessert menu stops there. —Zach Schiffman
Barker (Bed-Stuy)
The cafeteria as a concept is due for a resurgence — a simple menu, a lunchy purview, and a reasonable bill for the small price to pay of bussing your own tray? Call it a recession indicator if you must; just seems like horse sense to me. Barker Cafeteria is a midday aerie opened by Gracie Gardner and Henry Wright, a pair of married chefs who met at Blue Hill at Stone Barns. In a long, serenely minimal space, they turn out some very decent sandwiches, salads, and baked goods for the local creative-director class, the folks who instantly relax when David Byrne’s “Glass, Concrete, and Stone” comes on the soundtrack, as it did during my recent lunch. Barker isn’t cheap, but it’s well priced for sandwiches and a few entrées (like a tartiflette, which counter staff warns patrons takes a leisurely 20 minutes to prepare) that offer just enough cheffy flourish to feel special. The ham and cheese ($15) is maple ham and Comté, griddled in enough butter to necessitate an afternoon nap, and the expected tuna-salad sandwich gets swapped out for salmon rillettes with crème fraîche, radishes, and cukes ($16). A maple-syrup tart for dessert seemed small when I ordered it, but it’s so sweet that a Reese’s-size cup will do. —Matthew Schneier
Bufón (Lower East Side)
The mood is Swankstaurant Lite at this new corner spot from Quang Nguyen and Dina Fan, the chefs behind Demo on Carmine Street. That’s no knock: Relaxing the grandiloquence and dropping any pretense of faux exclusivity means dinner here is just … pleasant. The staff behind the horseshoe bar is genial and welcoming, and the double-room space feels more like a lived-in bistro than a clubhouse. The kitchen is given space for little bit of creative expression, too. Rosy Greenmarket radicchio is mixed with Asian pear and slices of ripe persimmon while simple crudités come with curried aioli for dipping. The focus, to some degree, is on steak (and it’s good, especially with a boat of salsa criolla on the side), but the best entrée on the menu right now is a filet of mackerel; its skin was puffed and crisped on the grill atop a pool of cumin-rich mojo sauce. —Alan Sytsma
Mộc Mạc (East Village)
By day, this Vietnamese restaurant serves a short menu of greatest hits: blistered spring rolls, bánh mì, vermicelli-noodle bowls. By night, there is none of the above. Instead, a meal starts with cucumber pilsner from Heart of Darkness craft brewery in Saigon and a lidded metal pot of littleneck clams steamed in a lemongrass broth so verdant I spooned it up with the empty shells. The richness of minced goes far with warm spices and a grilled betel-leaf wrapper, both recalling Lebanese warak enab, until it meets murky fermented anchovy sauce rounded out with pineapple, garlic, and chile. That same house sauce accompanies lime-cured beef salad piled with large, crisp leaves of basil and mint. It all leads up to the main attraction, seen at nearly every table, a still-bubbling pot of pho broth bobbing with oxtails and tender shank, with herbs, rice noodles, and raw sliced beef presented in platters alongside. —Tammie Teclemariam
EAT LIKE THE EXPERTS.
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