Reynards

Located on the ground floor of " The Wythe Hotel" in Williamsburg this Tarlow project(Diner, Marlow and Sons) has a big corner dining room with a wood burning oven and open kitchen. This oven is the center piece for the farm to table cooking done here. Bread from Hot Bread Kitchen and housechurned butter- yellow in color sprinkled with sea salt is a treat. Oven roasted olives($3) with herbs are tasty. The sunchoke soup($8) served with creme fraiche is a savory, flavorfull soup and eaten with the bread and butter is even better. My main was the lobster with potato and fava beans($23). Simply served with a champane creme sauce this dish had clean fresh flavor. For dessert, a rhubarb cobbler with housemade ice-cream($10) crowned a "foodgasmic" meal. GoGo!

The Great Googa Mooga

Imagine two stellar days with some of the most imaginative food around(40% from Brooklyn). Also, imagine the crowds who love these food and music festivals. Googa Mooga brought people from all over the country to Brooklyn in what looked like a carnival with some of the most cutting edge food around plus a beer and wine tent and so much more. Music by the Roots on Saturday and Hall and Oats on Sunday. The toughest part of the Googa Mooga experience was the marathon lines. Of course, if your ticket was free- not so bad, if it was $249 then there is a problem. Champagne tastings, chef talks with Tom Collicho, a book signing- Cooking with Coolio. Foodwise, there was a Pizza Experience, a Sweet Circus, a Burger Experience and Hamagedon. I ate a few things....Northern Fried Chicken from Blue Ribbon Bakery- salty, spicy with Mexican honey. The grilled lobster from Lobster Place was tasty. Meat Hook's housemade dog with sweet/spicy slaw also very tasty. Monica's crawfish over pasta was just ok. The Liddabit sweets from the marketlace- maple cotton candy and homemade maple chocolate caramel corn was clever and orgasmic. So much to try, but lines to long to invest the time. Next year go early, eat fast and leave before the crowds. Otherwise, an amazing event. Next year..... GO!

Giovanni's Brooklyn Eats

A winner of a corner spot where the best of old school Brooklyn Italian meets it's more updated cousin. The menu here is so varied it would be hard not to find something you like. I picked a new and old school choice. Bread is tasty with their own olive oil. I ordered an arugula salad ($6.95) to accompany my main, which sadly arrived first. Service here is a little on the confused side. Next up was the main, veal cutlet parmigiana with a side of spaghetti($14) The side was $3 extra which was still reasonable for the quality of food. The arugula salad with slight lemon undertones and generous parmesan was good not as good as Co. or other ones I have tried. The veal parm. on the other hand, so satisfied my longing for a favorite longtime dish. Perfectly crisped veal and cheese lovingly melted under the flatttop. The spaghetti, perfectly cooked aldente with a killer sauce. Will return for the veal parm. A lunch of $9.95 for two courses till 4PM is a quite a good value. GO!

Cafe Frida

With a view of the Museum of Natural History, Cafe Frieda has a prime location and some upscale eats. They have a wide variety of salsas to sample and I went with three for $3. The dissapointing part of the salsas is the non-housemade chips. This spot features upmarket Mexican street food and while the salsas were all good, they would have been made better with house fried chips. The main on the other hand, a salmon flavored with achiote and bitter orange for $22 hit the mark. The salmon was served in a banana leaf with chipotle mashed plantains. Here's the zing. Perfectly cooked salmon with mega flavor set off by the sweet/spicy plantain mash. After this early meal along came strollers and screaming children. Also, the service was inattentive and rushed at the end of the meal. SLOWGO!

Capizzi

Across from the bowels of Port Authority, Capizzi is an Italian owned and operated pizza restaurant with a wood burning oven. The owners are from Staten Island run La Bella there. The wood fired oven creates a searingly hot and delicious pie- period! The restaurant is decorated with vintage goodies like an old tv, working refrigerator and a picture of the I love Lucy crew in the bathroom. It is an adorably decorated place. The pizza is perfection! The margharita comes out of the oven dark not charred. Crust has a little chew, lovely mozzarella, sublime sauce and pieces of fresh basil. Love this pizza! MUST GO!