Burgers are one of my favorite things ever. EVER. So when the Brooklyn Public House, an Irish bar with food, opened up in Fort Greene right across from the bar I work at, I was actually pretty excited about it. I mean, my bar doesn’t have food. Heck, we don’t even make martinis let alone have an extensive beer and wine list. I called up my best friend and we decided to try it out, despite the continuous crowd that flowed in and out of the bar’s pretty glass doors. Thursday night we entered the low lit, tin roofed, and nicely made up bar. The flustered and slightly impatient hostess sat us down at a community table, completely ignoring the fact that one side lacked chairs. Whatever, I grumbled and pulled one from across the floor. We sat down and perused he short menu.
Hummm…mussels, fish and chips, bangers, salad…ah, burger. For $11 you get a cheeseburger with cheddar, American, or mozzarella, onion rings, homemade potato chips, and a small green salad. For an extra $1.50 you can add bacon or sub the potato chips for fries. I ordered a medium rare burger with bacon and cheddar. It came out and the sheer sized of the burger intimidated me. It was impossible to put in one’s mouth due to the two massive onion rings stacked on top. Easy enough, I popped one of the fried things in my mouth and squished the other one down. There wasn’t much flavor to my onion treat, unlike the fresh and incredibly salty chips that I couldn’t stop eating. Now, between the bun rested the patty, lettuce, an unripe tomato that I shucked, red onion, and a sticky slice of American cheese. I cursed the waitress under my breath until my companion swore I asked for it, not cheddar like I wanted. Fine, I thought, American isn’t so bad anyway. After taking a sip of mediocre Malbec I dug in.
First, it was unevenly cooked. Part of it was medium-rare like I asked, but the other part was medium. Okay, fine. But the real problem was the complete lack of flavor. Within the giant Kaiser roll the only thing I tasted was the bacon, which was good and cooked perfectly. I tried a nibble of the burger meat and have concluded they use absolutely no seasoning. Also, I should have taken off the layer of iceberg lettuce, which was too crunchy and made me taste the meat even less. I felt crushed. My hopes of having a kick ass place just seconds away had been dashed. Oh well, there is still Chez Oskar down the street. And, Brooklyn Public Houses isn’t dead to me. I might try their other food options since as we were finishing up we ran into a friend of mine who praised the bangers and mash and who was manically eating a pile of mussels. So, perhaps not all is lost and it is a nice bar to drink in, if you can get through the crowd.
To kick off my attempt to be better at blogging (ha!) I thought I would share a little juicy tidbit about Tillie’s, my old place of employment. According to a piece from New York Magazine’s Daily Intel, Russian spies were using the Fort Greene coffee shop to do devious spy like things such as: sipping black coffee, wearing berets, gossiping, and passing state secrets. The Wall Street Journal reported:
