TOAD: March 22nd, 2007: Brooklyn Restaurant week goes from March 19-30 and Karen and I got a reservation at Crave last Thursday – a small place in the old neighborhood we’d always wanted to try. Our reservation was for 8 o’clock so we met up beforehand at another place we’ve been intrigued by, Bocca Lupo (owned by the same guy that owns one of our favorites, Nectar), a wine bar + restaurant, for a couple glasses of wine. Our time there was brief but what we saw (and smelled) was more than enough to get us back there very soon to sample the food. Everything looked delicious and thoughtfully prepared. We were also treated to a surprise local celebrity, brooklyn borough president, Marty Markowitz, who also stopped by for a visit.
After our wine, we walked down to Crave and got our dinner on. We ended up both getting some shrimp spring rolls to start (pretty good, though piping hot). Karen and I then went “splitsies” with the entrees – curried pork loin with couscous and rainbow trout with mixed root vegetables. I once again confirmed that curry isn’t really my favorite spice as I find it to be too much of a flavor bully with anything it gets near. The trout on the other hand, was phenomenal, and took home the “Dish of the Night” award. To round it all up, Karen got a mixed sorbet plate and I got a celery root cake with some peanut butter ice cream. I liked my dessert a whole lot – the cake was slightly carrot-cake-esque but it was the peanut butter ice cream that really pulled it together.
One thing they did that I’d never seen before was let you take home whatever’s left in your bottle of wine if you don’t finish it. Even though polishing off a bottle of wine at dinner is by no means an insurmountable task, it’s nice to see that they give you the option to keep the party going at home, so to speak.
All in all the food was good but there was a little too much Marcel-ian thinking – too many foams, etc… Does foam ever really add enough to a dish to justify the visual unpleasantness? In the end, I give Crave about a B overall (though the Trout pulled a solid A).
