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!