A Clinton Hill Resident Eats

Olea - By Tra B:

When I first moved to Clinton Hill about eight years ago, there was a nice little restaurant named “A Table” – the phrase French mothers use to call their families to the dinner table – about three blocks from my apartment. We went there a few times and thought the food decent enough to explain its being full most of the time. When it suddenly closed about three years later, we were more than a little surprised and felt like we’d lost an acquaintance; there was brief period of reflection followed not long after by acceptance. I’d always hoped that a quality produce shop would open up in its place but when I learned that it would be another restaurant, I quickly lost all interest. Even though I’ve passed it at least three times a week since it opened a few years ago, I never checked the menu or gave it much thought.

So on roughly my two-hundredth pass-by last week, I was desperately in the mood for some soup and very short on time. I actually walked past before deciding that it was really my only option. One cup of butternut squash soup later and I was suggesting to my wife that we make a point of grabbing a meal there.

Enter Brooklyn Restaurant Week. Three courses for $23 per person ($38 with wine service). The pre fixe menu:

Appetizer - Serrano ham with frisee and bleu cheese or crab meat with? (forget the details b/c crab meat generally turns my stomach)

Main Course – Lamb Shank with mashed turnip and wilted escarole or Rock Shrimp Risotto

Dessert – Blueberry Lemon Tart with Raspberry Sorbet or Assorted Cheese plate

I not so much asked my wife if she’d like to go as told her she’d need to make reservations. When she hesitated – would’ve done it myself but I was cooking at the time – I reminded her again. She was on the phone a little later and we were all set. Fast forward to the other night.

Surprisingly for Restaurant Week, the whole menu was on offer in addition to the pre fixe choices – not always the case - so we added a myrtleberry margarita and some herbed goat cheese croquettes to our tab. Both were fine choices, especially the croquettes. As for the rest of the meal, I opted for the ham, lamb, and tart; my wife the ham, shrimp, and cheese plate. The Serrano ham was, well, Serrano ham - salty, pungent, and um, good. Frisee is nasty any which way you cut it and should remain rooted firmly in the ground for animals to graze on. The tender, buttery lamb shank in either a wine or balsamic glaze was delectable; perhaps they’d tapped Big D for his newly perfected braising technique. Both the escarole and turnip were just a little too salty and sweet, respectively, for my taste buds but not enough by any stretch to ruin the meal. As excellent as the tart was, the raspberry sorbet was better and the perfect end to an extremely satisfying meal.

I tasted a bit of my wife’s risotto, which was pretty good as well, but by the time she offered up some cheese from her dessert plate, I’d just appreciated the last spoonful of my raspberry sorbet and there was absolutely no way I was ending the culinary portion of my evening any other way.

Olea - www.oleabrooklyn.com - is located on the corner or Lafayette and Adelphi Avenues (171 Lafayette Avenue) in the Clinton Hill/Fort Greene section of Brooklyn.

When A Six Figure Salary Isn't Enough ...

Fresh out of law school in 1998 I naively thought my $110,000 annual salary would make renting an apartment a breeze. I targeted a newly constructed building on the lower East Side that did not require a broker's fee. The $1,600 monthly rent kept me well below the 40 X salary formula the building used to qualify prospective tenants. But as anyone who has ever rented in New York knows, it's never that simple. Despite my salary and credit history, the building required a guarantor. Considering that my salary made me the highest paid person in my entire extended family, there was no one I could turn to. I fumed as I watched recent college grads earning a fraction of my salary breeze through the application process and get apartments on the strength of their parent's finances while my protestations fell on deaf ears. Thankfully, it worked out fine in the end, I moved to and fell in love with Brooklyn and saved a lot of money, but I wouldn't have minded the option of using a service like Insurent. Insurent is an institutional guarantor that for a fee between 4.5% and 11% of your annual rent, will guaranty your lease. It's not clear how many buildings participate in this program, but it seems like an idea that could take off in New York. When even lawyers at fucking White Shoe law firms can't rent a fucking apartment in this town without a fucking guarantor (about how I felt back then), I'd say the need is clear. And from a landlord's perspective, an institutional guarantor seems no more risky than an individual guarantor. For those willing to pay the premium, Insurent might be the ticket to scoring that killer $2500 studio.