If you enjoy vistas of deserted industrial streets and dramatic harbor skies, Red Hook is the hood for you. But even if you’re not in the market for cheap Swedish furniture or reveling in misanthropy, there’s other reason to head out here. Ever since the Red Hook Lobster Pound opened last year, lobster-lovers in particular have been finding the trek worthwhile.

(looking down Van Dyke Street, Red Hook)

Ever since Luke’s Lobster opened in the East Village, I’ve consumed more lobster rolls than I care to admit, including a couple from the not-enigmatic-enough Dr. Claw in Greenpoint. Sadly, Dr. Claw was shut down by the Department of Health in August for running an underground lobster roll operation out of his apartment, but when he was in business he bought his crustaceans from the Red Hook Lobster Pound. Taste-wise, Dr. Claw’s rolls were totally legit. But I couldn’t really see the outsized persona (we’re talking shades, gold lobster claw bling, and third-person self-referencing) and the novelty of exchanging cash on the street for a hot paper bag, NOT attracting a big story in New York Magazine. (The article at the NYmag link has some interesting info about why lobster is suddenly affordable street fare by the way). I hope Dr. Claw is back in a DOH-blessed operation soon because the rolls spoke for themselves, but generally I’m happy to cut through the pretense and go to the source.

(a shot of one of Dr. Claw’s deliciously basic creations, before the bust)

The Red Hook Lobster Pound is located in the midst of gentrification creeping up Van Brunt Street, which is relatively lively with shops, galleries, and restaurants. Inside the pound, two large vats hold live, fresh-catch lobsters trucked in from Maine. They’re available for purchase although they encourage reservations on weekends. Rolls are ordered up at the counter, and seating consists of a bench outside or a picnic area next door.

I ordered a Connecticut-style lobster roll ($15 and pictured at the top of the post), which was served with grilled lobster meat topped with lots of butter, paprika, and scallions in a toasted split-top bun. The roll comes with chips and a pickle, and ginger ale was $2.50 extra. My friend got the Maine-style roll (pictured above), which had cold meat lightly dressed in mayonnaise. Both were excellent and filled with huge chunks of delicate claw meat. I slightly preferred the Maine version, since I couldn’t resist eating the Connecticut roll long enough for the lobster to cool and quit burning my tongue. My friend slightly preferred the less mayonnaisey version at Luke’s, and I thought the toasted bread at the Pound was a bit better, but we thought they were pretty much neck-in-neck. The amount of lobster in the rolls was generous at both places but the total price when you included the soda was slightly steeper at the Pound than at Luke’s, where a drink is included for $16.

In addition to the slight pricing difference Red Hook is not that easy to get to. The F train makes a hard right away from it, damning residents to walking from the Carroll Street stop under the Gowanus Expressway and through housing projects to get to the snacks. One alternative is the M61 bus, which runs from the 9th Street stop up Van Brunt Street. The ferry from Ikea to Pier 11 in Manhattan is another option, although they recently started charging $5 each way unless you spend $10 at Ikea. Basically, if you’re up for furniture shopping, exploring the neighborhood, or heading out to the Latin food stalls at the Red Hook ballfields, stopping in for a roll is a must. But if you’re feeling lazy, you can do just as well at Luke’s.

Red Hook Lobster Pound
284 Van Brunt Street, Brooklyn
Wed 12pm-8pm Thurs-Sat 12pm-9pm Sun 12pm-8pm

I believe there’s a therapeutic value to having your water unobtrusively refilled, without needing to ask anyone. The knife you dropped in your appetizer that is swiftly replaced before the next course; the napkin that is neatly refolded when you return from the restroom; the single beam of light that misses you and falls instead on your soon-to-be-full plate, all have a similar soothing effect. Whatever chaos reigns outside, here is the kind of calming order that makes eating better.

Certainly the menu for the front room at Gramercy Tavern is nothing fancy–a pulled pork sandwich and lasagna are among the entrees–but the place does have a Michelin Star, and the front room offered a glimmer of hope of being more affordable than the posh dining room. The front room doesn’t take reservations so we waited an hour at the height of the Saturday night rush for a table. Time passed quickly enough while sipping cocktails at the bar and perusing a copy of Edible Manhattan from the waiting area. The tavern is a pleasantly unstuffy space, with ceiling beams evoking an 18th century inn, and a splashy mural of fruits and flowers lending brightness to the room.

After we were seated I ordered a single raw oyster, which our server brought in a bowl of ice, with lemon, diced cucumber, and cocktail sauce. I’d never eaten an oyster before, and had heard them described either in utterly delightful or completely repellent terms. I stabbed the slithery mass with a dainty fork and rolled it around my mouth a little before it slid down my throat, leaving a memory of butter and brine. It was gone too fast for me to pin any specific words to the moment, but I felt like I’d had an espresso shot. We ordered some more. I chewed the second one a bit in order to better taste it, but this time I got all brine and no sweetness. The difference in taste was intriguing since both came from the same place (Island Creek, MA). I could have had a few more but I was eager to get on with the rest of the meal.

My appetizer, the porchetta salad ($16) goes down as one of my all-time favorite salads. Cider vinegar lightly dressed escarole, fennel, radishes, parsley, toasted bits of buttered bread, and thinly-sliced roast pork. Porchetta can be overwhelmingly rich and fatty, but just a few slices layered with crisp vegetables were delicious. My crappy camera phone shot doesn’t really do it justice. I also tasted the fish croquette appetizer ($12), which was appealingly delicate and non-fishy, although our server couldn’t specify what kind of fish was in it. It was served with tasty heirloom white beans and arugula.

For an entree I ordered the meatball ($18). Yes, that’s a meatball–singular–for $18. But what a meatball. It was, thankfully, enormous and served sliced in half, interlaced by strings of melting fontina cheese, atop a buttery smooth potato puree, red wine onions, and some pitch-dark, intensely beef-flavored demi glace. I tried a bit of the chicken entree ($19), which consisted of a perfectly moist breast and thigh with crisp skins, served with broccoli rabe, more heirloom beans and green beans. It was fine, but plain compared to the in-your-face flavors and heartiness of the meatball.

I’ve been burned by many a bad dessert when eating out, but when a place employs their own pastry chef I make it a point not to miss it. We decided to split the butterscotch bread pudding with pear sorbet ($9), and our server brought an extra scoop of sorbet for us–a nice touch. The bread pudding was the perfect consistency, somewhere between french toast and custard. It was served with an orange sauce that tasted of citrus mellowed with honey, and a crisp almond cookie. The pear sorbet was refreshing and tart, and when you loaded all elements on your fork, you got sweet, tart, warm, cold, crunch and smoothness; more depth and flavor than I’ve had in a dessert in a while.

All-in-all we spent about $145 for two appetizers, two entrees, three drinks, a few oysters, and one dessert, including tip; but everything I had was very good, and the salad and dessert were excellent. Know something else that makes eating better? Someone else picking up the check.

Gramercy Tavern
42 E. 20th St. between Park Ave and Broadway
Tavern hours: Sun-Thurs 12pm-11pm, Fri-Sat 12pm-12am

Usually I’m not too eager to try vegetarian restaurants, so my excitement leading up to dinner at Dirt Candy was pretty much unprecedented. By “vegetarian restaurants,” I’m not talking about ethnic fare that happens to be meatless, like you’d find at a falafel place or certain curry houses. I mean the kind of restaurant that claims vegetarianism as its raison d’etre. The kind of place that throws tofu or seitan in your $20 entree as if that were a worthy substitute for meat. The kind of place where you watch your lovely and adorable vegetarian companion happily tucking into soy byproducts and visualize a pulled pork sandwich over their face in silent retaliation for what you are about to consume. Dirt Candy, on the other hand, sounds like the kind of restaurant I could really enjoy. Instead of trying to replicate meat dishes, chef Amanda Cohen elevates vegetables as the main ingredient using an innovative menu and bold flavors. After trying to stop in a couple of times, I realized that it’s near-impossible to simply walk in and get a table. Instead I had to make a reservation a week ahead on Open Table, plenty of time for my anticipation to build.

The restaurant is squeezed into a narrow, studio-apartment sized space that’s intimate for two people but probably claustrophobia-inducing for a group larger than three or four. I had to perform a careful balancing act on my chair, which threatened to dump me onto the floor, for much of the night. There were really no other chairs to trade with though, since every table was full. Our server asked straight away if we were vegan, since Dirt Candy uses dairy but each dish can be made vegan on request (we said we were not). Throughout dinner this server, who was nice enough, kept re-stocking wine glasses on the wall behind my head–a fairly irritating setup, but one I was able to ignore once the food arrived.

First course was a plate of jalapeno hush puppies served with maple butter ($6). They were easily the best damn hush puppies I’ve ever had. Deep fried yet light corn batter with a subtle jalapeno heat is tasty enough, but when lavished with sweet, creamy maple butter, it’s a knockout. I actually had to restrain myself from eating more of that wonderful butter straight from the dish. Fortunately the next round of appetizers arrived before I could so debase myself. A plate of three steamed carrot buns ($11) was a bit of a letdown due to the fact that the buns were way too bready, detracting from the intriguing sweet filling. After several guesses on our part (“beets?” “figs?”) our server told us the filling consisted of water chestnuts, sesame, carrots, and barbecue sauce. The buns were served with a small side salad of jullienned cucumber and ginger, with crumbles of sweet, crunchy sesame halvah. All the ingredients really sang in the side salad, and the halvah won me over much the same way the maple butter did. A second appetizer, and probably the highlight of the evening was the mushroom plate ($13). This was a deconstructed dish, featuring a square of portobello mousse, a pile of roasted portobello mushrooms, a peach and fennel compote, toasted bread with truffle oil, and a drizzle of reduction sauce running along the plate. Now, I have a complicated relationship with mushrooms. I’ve found them both delicious and off-putting at times, and I typically don’t eat them by themselves. But I enjoyed this dish. The earthy, complex flavor of mushrooms infused in a silky mousse reminded me of one of those disorienting taste sensations I get while eating Japanese food. Is it delicious? Not quite, but it is unforgettable.

For my entree, although I was intrigued by the corn dish which featured a “tempura poached egg,” I went with the tomato plate, because while I’m conflicted about mushrooms there are few things I love more than tomatoes. This dish was three perfectly battered and fried green tomato slices atop yellow tomato sauce with toasted coconut and jicama, flecked with little doughy balls of spaetzle. This was satisfying, well-rounded dish, but it didn’t wow me like the hush puppies or mushroom mousse. However, I appreciated it more after tasting the zucchini entree, with mint and terragon pasta, squash blossom relish, and yogurt & saffron sauce. The pasta seemed sodden with bland, tahini-like sauce, and I didn’t catch any mint or tarragon, although little falafel balls at the edges of the plate provided some needed textural contrast.

By the time we got to dessert my stomach was at capacity and my friend doesn’t do chocolate, so we split the only non-chocolate option on the menu, popcorn pudding. As promised, the pudding was infused with popcorn flavor and came with a side of hazlenut caramel popcorn for dipping. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: many restaurants do a lousy job with dessert. Compared to the rest of the menu, the pudding was pretty basic, but executed well enough that I’d have gladly given any one of the other desserts a try if I could have possibly eaten more.

In total we spent $107 on two entrees, two appetizers, one dessert, hush puppies, and two glasses of wine, not including tip. This isn’t outrageous, but I left feeling perhaps my expectations had been too high. Had the zucchini entree and carrot buns been better, I’d probably feel it was money well-spent. As it was, I was glad I tried Dirt Candy, but felt one visit was enough. If you’re looking for a place where dietary restrictions are no obstacle to inventive cuisine, or if you have a lovely and adorable vegetarian or vegan on your hands and are looking for someplace where you can both eat well, this is a good place to check out. I can tell you honestly, I didn’t visualize pulled pork once the entire night.

Dirt Candy
430 E. 9th St. between First Ave and Ave. A
Tue-Sat 5:30pm-11pm
reservation recommended