Bookshelf

Which 63 Dishes Represent New Brooklyn Cuisine?

Photo: Courtesy of the General Greene

If you can’t wait till next week’s chance to buy an advance copy of The New Brooklyn Cookbook and you’re wondering who made the cut, we’ve scored an early look at the table of contents. In their intro, Melissa and Brendan Vaughan trace New Brooklyn Cuisine back to two restaurants in particular — al di là and Diner, followed by the Grocery and Saul — and describe Rob Patronite and Robin Raisfeld’s review of the General Greene as “the high point for that particular conception of a New Brooklyn restaurant.” In that review, Patronite and Raisfeld described New Brooklyn Cuisine as:

[A] very specific subgenre of the more familiar New American Cuisine. It flourishes in the bucolic hinterlands of Boerum Hill and Prospect Heights, the low country of Carroll Gardens and Williamsburg, and the great plains of Park Slope, and has as its common denominator a very New York culinary sophistication melded with a wistfully agrarian passion for the artisanal, the sustainably grown, and the homespun.

Now, say the Vaughns, we’re in a period that needn’t be called a backlash, but nevertheless shows “fatigue with the farm-to-table, local-seasonable-sustainable thing.” Without further ado, here are the dishes that made it into the book, which comes out in October. Chime in if any of your favorites were overlooked.

The New Brooklyn Cookbook: Contents [pdf]

Which 63 Dishes Represent New Brooklyn Cuisine?