Pomegranates Hit Their Stride, Longans Hit the Streets
As the holidays get under way, rich, warming foods are of course de rigueur, as is their refreshing counterpoint: imported sunshine in the form of citrus and tropical fruit.
At the Market
Pumpkin Gnocchi and Persimmons Herald Another Season of Great EatingIt’s time for cherry-picking in Chile, chestnut-roasting in Italy, and — what else? — specialty-food-hunting in New York. Welcome to the first installment of the new weekly column “At the Market,” where we scour gourmet stores for the seasonal, exotic, and obscure ingredients of the moment.
Openings
Ditmas Park: New Center of the Food Universe?
Brooklyn’s Ditmas Park, known primarily for its immense Victorian houses, may never be as hip as Red Hook. But, in a sea change reminiscent of Red Hook’s Van Brunt Street, a cluster of new food ventures are springing up there along Courtelyou Road. The strip began its upswing last year with Picket Fence, whose kitchen we’ve praised as “disarmingly daring.” This past summer, the Farm on Adderley, an equally ambitious restaurant with a first-class bar, opened. (They just began serving inventive brunch items on Sundays.)
Now comes word that on November 1, TB Ackerson Fine Wine Merchant will open a store specializing in organic and biodynamic wines at 1205 Cortelyou Road and that Park Slope candy shop–ice-cream parlor Rapper’s Delight will move to Ditmas Park. There’s no equivalent of Sunny’s or Fairway in the neighborhood, but who’s to say what the next year might bring?