Puerto Alegre - Mission District, San Francisco

On a trip to San Francisco, we decided to look for a Sunday morning brunch place. After we successfully took a ride on an antique streetcar down Market Street which is really fun and only slightly touristy, we got off and looked for a place to eat. A few places that were noted for Brunch had long lines so we decided to go off the beaten path and look for something else. Justin knew a place that he used to go to in the Mission but it was gone, so we settled on a cheap, hole-in-the wall Mexican diner at 546 Valencia between 16th and 17th.

Reasonable prices, unlimited chips and salsa, and coffee at $1.35. Fine dining - its not, but instead, it's pretty darn good Mexican. The decor was tacky, diner-tastic meaning dark, pleather booths, and wood paneling. Yet the place was fairly packed and the service was fast and friendly.



The brunch menu is fairly extensive (2 pages!) and all entrees are between $6-9. All come with your choice of flour or corn torillas in addition to your entree. I got Huevos Rancheros which also came with a small salad and rice/beans. It was a hearty portion and the 2 eggs were cooked perfectly. They weren't overly runny which you sometimes get. It was filling and delicious. The beans and rice were fairly standard but a good compliment. There was a torilla on the bottom of the eggs but it got too soggy to eat. Justin got a sort of egg and meat scrambled dish that also came with a small salad and rice/beans. Again - a big hit. With coffee, the total came to under $20. All in all - a very good meal and one I'd highly recommend.

General Greene - Fort Greene

Today's expedition was to the General Greene, located at 229 DeKalb, in the heart of a restaurant row of sorts in Fort Greene. The place itself is small but light, bright, and airy with wooden tables and whitewashed walls giving you the feeling you are in a barn or in the country. There's some outdoor seating as well as a small store in the back selling various organic and local treats, which was a nice surprise. Initially, you feel very relaxed....yet for me, that initial feeling soon faded. Here's why:

First the food. I had the Pressed Egg & Gruyere mustard aioli sandwich. It was literally a piece of egg with a little bit of cheese and mustard. Justin put it best when asked to describe the egg ‘ they did whatever they do in McDonalds to make an egg sandwich’. It came on a dark, hearty, multi-grain (perhaps pumpernickel) bread that completely overpowered and overwhelmed the egg and cheese. It was a sandwich of bread, bread, and more bread but not even good bread but hard and overly crummy bread. It supposedly came with a small side salad but in reality, it was a few pieces of lettuce doused in some sort of vinaigrette. Not enjoyable at all. I rather eat McDonalds and I’d save money too.

Justin got a ranchero and pinto bean skillet with Monterey jack, lime sour cream, and cilantro. The eggs were overcooked and smothered in the various sauces. To me, it looked and tasted like a bad child experiment where you just throw tons of stuff into a skillet, bake it, and hope it tastes good.

It was also fairly overpriced with Justin's entree costing $14 and my terrible egg sandwich costing $8 - neither of which came with anything additional. The coffee was $3 though the wait staff did come around often and offer to refill the coffee.

Next the service. We walked in and were immediately offered a table by the door, literally in the doorway. When we declined to take the table, the hostess was sort of shocked. I typically take any table but I really didn't feel like sitting in a doorway with constant traffic coming in and out. We got a table by the window, which was fine before a table of adults, and kids took the longish table next to us. Three 7-10 year old boys at brunch = complete and utter insanity. The boys were constantly fighting, moving seats, and leaving the restaurant. A fun dining atmosphere - note the sarcasm. The adults were very apologetic which I appreciated it but it was a rough dining experience to say the least.

So the General Greene’s brunch is not one that I'd recommend, as there are plenty of good brunch places in this area. Save your money and don't dine with the general.

Soigne - Park Slope

As Easter is apparently the day of brunch - we naturally had to give brunch a try. So we headed down to South Park Slope to try Soigne, a relatively new wine bar and restaurant on 6th Avenue (486 6th Ave to be exact). Off the typical Park Slope brunch path, this was a pleasant surprise.

First, the place is really more restaurant than wine bar – it’s a restaurant with a bar really. It's good sized with outdoor seating and tables for two near the windows with larger tables in the middle and back of the restaurant. It's on the dark side with brown and green decor choices but with great natural light and home-y touches of 1930's art deco mirrors, it is warm, cozy, and bright. As it was Easter and in Park Slope, it had a rather eclectic crowd of young professionals, families, and older adults.

Onto the food, I got a crabcake benedict (jumbo lump crabcake over poached eggs with chive hollandaise sauce) as it sounded delicious and I had not had crab cakes in forever. It came with 2 petite crab cakes with a poach egg on top of each. Just the right size! Deliciously flakey and flavorful. It came with a small vinaigrette salad that was mediocre but it was a good compliment to a sort of heartier breakfast. Justin got a mushroom quiche with some sort of bacon which was also quite good. The menus aren't posted anywhere except literally outside restaurant as they change them quite often to ensure they are in season and using fresh ingredients.

The brunch entrees are between $12-16 but come with free coffee which it makes it alot more reasonable since most brunch places charge between $3-5 for coffee. Overall, a lovely brunch spot with good tasty brunch that I will definitely be returning too!

reBar - DUMBO

So this isn't a brunch entry but it is a Brooklyn restaurant that serves brunch so I think it qualifies as brunch blog entry.

reBar is a gastropub located on the main strip in Dumbo - literally underneath the Manhattan Bridge at 147 Front Street between Jay and Pearl. reBar is part bar, part restaurant, part movie theater playing indie and old movies. The last part was a pleasant surprise to us and we'll going back to give it a try in the future. They have a full menu (food and drinks) in the movie theater so it looks like a good time. Now back to reBar as a restaurant. It's dark and gothic looking with metal gates and high backed leather chairs. In the dining area, there are a bunch of small 2 person tables and then 2 very large banquet style tables where you will be sharing table space with your neighbor. The space is dark with candlelight and a good mix of music from Kid Cudi to Adele. A huge beer list - like 3 pages just for bottles and then another page for whats on tap.

The menu is seasonal with both small plates and entree-size portions. I opted to try mainly small plates with a salad for my main while Justin had the entree-size portion along with the small plates. They give you olive bread to start with olive oil. Great bread - the olives were big pieces and the bread was soft and warm. It was a step up from the usual white or sourdough bread that you typically get at restaurants.

We tried 3 small plates: Polenta with an egg, salmon rolls, and buffalo mozzerella served with flatbread crisps. The polenta was a great dish - the fried egg took up a large portion of the bowl with polenta served underneath. The polenta was just the right amount of creamy and flavorful. The salmon rolls were interesting - it's Asian-inspired American cuisine - thin wrapping with salmon served sashami style along with some other vegetables. It was an interesting combination of flavors but they seemingly worked. The buffalo mozzerella ended up being a small bowl of fried cheese which was just too cheesy. One small bite of it and I knew that we had misordered. So one small plate - delicious, one small plate - good, and one small plate - gross.

My salad was an iceberg wedge with snow peas, preserved lemon, manchego, and pistachio vinaigrette. Mistake - an iceberg wedge is just too much lettuce. The other bits were nice but after I had ate a healthy portion of salad (including lettuce) - I still had tons of lettuce left over. Justin got the lamb which he thought was well-cooked and flavorful. It was interesting cut of meat since it was fatty but the fat made the lamb very tasty so essentially - it was a good piece of lamb. It also came with vegetables that needed salt.

Last we got a strange desert - marjolaine cake. It's no flour but yet it stays together somehow with custard and almonds/nuts. Not sure how to describe it except cold, custardy, and confusing.

I liked reBar but didn't love it. Yet, with an ever changing menu and a movie theater inside, I would return in the summer time to give it another try.

Peaches Hothouse - Bedford-Stuyvesant

From the owners of The Smoke Joint in Fort Greene, Peaches and Peaches HotHouse feature an updated twist on Southern cooking and fried chicken. So in an effort to try and a new neighborhood - we trekked out to Bed Stuy to see how good this fried chicken really was. We opted to try Peaches HotHouse @ 415 Tompkins, the newer, cozier, and slightly cheaper sister to Peaches. The Hothouse is located half way between the Nostrand Avenue & Kingston Throop stops on the A and C or you can take one of a million buses. However none are that close so you will have at least a 5 block walk.

The place itself is small - maybe 10 tables. There's a small bar in back with 4 chairs as well. We got there and were told we'd have about a 10 minute wait. With the NCAA game in the background, we were content to wait....but where? Since there's no space in the restaurant to stand and we didn't want to stare at someone eating their food, we squeezed into the bar area. After about 20 minutes with a good 10 of them including me giving the evil eye to diners who had already paid but were lingering and watching the game - we got a table.

The menu is about a page with Southern classics: fried chicken, salmon, short ribs, and meatloaf. Each come with one side and there are alot of sides to choose from: collard greens, garlic kale, mac & cheese, french fires, bacon creamed corn, etc. There's also a bunch of non-traditional Southern dishes including rice bowl dishes including jambalya and lump crab. The place also features salads and sandwiches for those looking for lighter options. We had a really nice waiter who sat down and introduced himself and gave us food suggestions. First all drinks come in mason jars. I got a fruity coconut rum drink that was delicious, colorful, and also really strong. One was plenty! Also this isn't the sort of place where you get champagne. As our waiter said to a lady who ordered champagne and wanted a flute- "This is the HOTHOUSE, it's going to come in a cup". Suffice to say, she ordered a Coke.

I got the Nashville-style fried chicken because well it's the Hothouse. Also staring at the signs advertising the chicken and watching satisfied diners proved to me that I should get it. For $12, you get three pieces and they are big pieces. It's served on the top of white bread which doesn't really seem to add anything to it. Now a word about the entree: among the best fried chicken I've ever had!! Crispy but not overly crispy. Flakey, flavor-ful, and just darn good. Also liked that I also got to get a side (garlic kale) which was had alot of spice which made it hot and good. We also got mac & cheese and corn with bacon. The mac & cheese was a little bit too cheesy and basically the same that you get at Smoke Joint. The corn with bacon was alright but a bit too much bacon and not enough corn for my liking. Justin got the jambalaya which was a whole bowl of rice, sausage, shrimp, veggies, and some other things all thrown in together. It was good with alot of flavor and spice. Both of us were a fan of this dish and I'd consider getting this dish on my own. Too full for desert even with our waiter's suggestions even though the options did look really good.

Overall this place is worth the trek! Peaches Hothouse features good Southern food at reasonable prices and a welcoming, warm atmosphere. The waitstaff was very helpful and let us sit for awhile after we were done with our meal, which added to our experience. The menu has a wide variety of choices that makes this a place I want to return to.

Char No. 4 - Carroll Gardens

A favorite cited by a bunch of my friends, I was eager to try the brunch menu at Char No. 4 located on Brooklyn's restaurant row, Smith Street. The place itself has a different look with its black-brown siding than other area restaurants, which intrigued me. The bar area is located in the front of the restaurant so it looks super crowded and almost cramped when you get in. Yet once the host leads you to your table, the place seems to grow in size with a narrow dining room and then a comfortable large back room. The placement itself has dark woods and black painted walls - yet it still feels bright, light and airy.

The menu itself is Southern-inspired with Southern takes on egg and ham dishes. I was torn between ordering shrimp & grits or the house smoked artic char over crispy potato cake with a fried egg and egg remoulade. I decided to go with the artic char as I was interested in what exactly the potato cake would be. The dish itself was a fairly small portion despite its $15 price tag. The char was well cooked and seasoned and I liked the placement of the egg on a fish dish. Yet the rest of the dish was blah. The potato cake turned out to be a typical potato pancake (like the frozen kind you warm up in the oven) and there was an overabundance of sprouts on my plate. There were more sprouts than food. It was the kinda dish that might have worked better had the potato pancake been swapped for a biscuit on the bottom. Perhaps I should have opted for the shrimp and grits? I also got a buttermilk biscuit on the side, served with tasty pumpkin spice jam. Loved the biscuit as it was soft, flakey, and completely delicious.

Justin got a meat two ways sort of dish – the Char No. 4 Biscuits Benedict with house smoked ham, poached eggs & bacon gravy. It was sort of a meat and eggs dish that he seemed to like while I did not. I like the idea of a biscuits benedict but I don’t think it needed that much meat. Coffee was a bit pricey at $3 each which involved us trying to find our waiter for 20 minutes when we needed a refill. While we were seated fairly fast, it took awhile for us to order and then my biscuit came out 10-15 minutes AFTER our dishes came out.

All in all, a good brunch with an interesting and new take on what Southern brunch food can be. However is it really worth $46 for brunch – I don’t think so.

Traif - Williamsburg

Many entries to update but first a dinner update. Located near the JMZ and not much else, we journeyed to Traif in the southern part of Williamsburg. A pig on the front door gives you a good idea of what the menu is going to be like even before you walk in.

The decor is similar to many newer restaurants on Smith Street with lots of tables crowded on one side with a long bar on the other. We waited for about 5 minutes before we got a table though the Hostess had told us to anticipate a 20-30 minute wait. We were lucky enough to sit in the enclosed patio in the back of the restaurant with a view of the sky above and a garden behind us. It was cozy and comfortable.

Chef Jason Marcus is a chef well-known in Manhattan and so many people trek to Williamsburg to give this outpost a try. The menu is mainly small plates/tapas style with alot of bacon. Ironically enough, Traif is the Yiddish word for food that is not kosher. Dishes featuring shellfish, bacon, and cheese are decidedly not kosher so Marcus’s clever play on words is appreciated by this blogger.

We had inconsistent service. We waited for about 10 minutes before we were finally able to flag down a waiter. First, we got the bacon-wrapped blue cheese stuffed dates over spinach. This was the dish that food critics had raved about. It was good, not great. The blue cheese sort of overpowers the rest of the dish. You taste cheese and a slight crunch from the bacon - that's it. However, the tuna tartare and broccoli rabe dishes were each excellent - just a perfect dishes. Standout dishes period.

We also got pork belly, clams, and roasted carrots to round out our dishes. These dishes were pretty tasty too. The portions were all fairly small so I'd recommend 5-6 for 2 to split. After a long wait, we finally found our waiter to order desert. We HAD to order the bacon donuts for dessert because....well...bacon donuts, need I say more! They were great and a delicious way to end the meal. However, finding our waiter to get our check was a challenge. After debating where in the restaurant we’d sleep, our waiter emerged with the check.

All in all – Traif is recommended. For a bacon lover, this should be number one on your list. For someone who likes to try different and eclectic combinations of food, this is also a must visit. I’d give the food a 8 as the dishes are fun and unusual combinations but also delicious. I’d forget the bacon-wrapped blue cheese dates and order more tuna and broccoli rabe as they were truly spectacular dishes. Including service, I’d give Traif a 7 as the service was so spotty.