Food & Drink
Ghenet means "Yes, I'll sleep with you but not until you wash your hands" in Ethiopian. Photo by Serious Eats.
Dear Serious Eats web site, we hate slideshows, unless they’re celebrity plastic surgery photos. Love, Brokelyn.
Formatting quibbles aside, check out Serious Eats’ list of 10 modestly priced Valentine’s Day restaurants, which include three in Brooklyn (Olea, Cafe Moto and the “sensually” utensil-free Ghenet). There’s also one in Staten Island (the ferry’s romantic, even if mac and cheese is NOT.) Down at Broketown HQ, we’ve been debating the merits of acknowledging Valentine’s Day at all, with single dudes some of us staunchly opposed and married breeders others looking for any excuse to break out the bubbly and cupid-festooned Joe Boxers… ROAR! Whatever your plans (we’re actually curious, so feel free to pipe in), these places seem worth a visit at some point. Or are you single dudes down on restaurants altogether these days? [via Serious Eats]
Food & Drink
If this game isn't the bane of your existence like it is for Dave, check out some of these events.
Real talk: I will be avoiding bars on Super Bowl Sunday this year because I hate both teams and there’s a guarantee I would get beat to death by at least one, if not both, fanbases. You, however, might have a rooting interest besides “the field imploding like in the new Batman trailer,” but no TV and no interest in watching a glitchy Internet broadcast. Lucky for you, Brooklyn is home to many bars that off affordable ways to cater to your readiness for some football, from free wing buffets to cheap drinks to vegan parties to a super mustache bash. 
Food & Drink,
Outings
Bed-Stuy, drink or die. Photo by Clay Williams.
Bed-Stuy is on the rise and for the most part it seems to mostly be a good thing (depending on who you talk to) as cool new restaurants and bars get added to the nabe made famous by Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. But don’t take my word for it: This Saturday, our friend and photographer-about-town Clay Williams and friends are hosting a bar crawl through the Stuy: for $25, you get a free drink at each of four bars, small appetizers, swag from Yelp and a 2012 edition of the Not For Tourists Brooklyn guidebook, which sounds like more than $25 worth of stuff. You can buy tickets online through midnight Friday. See the full list of bars below.
Food & Drink
Williamsburg/ Greenpoint
I want to skee my balls in it! Photo by Flickr's Michael Baker.
Anyone who grew up around a boardwalk will tell you skeeball is a special kind of winter time fun that made you appreciate the barren arcades before the horrible summer tourist crowds come down. Tonight, you can experience it for free: our friends at Full Circle Bar are hosting a FREE night of skeeball (usually $1 a game) to kick off the Brewskee-Ball Winter Skeeson Kick-Off Jamboree, plus an open bar from 7-9 of Genny beers (Cream Ale, tall boys, etc). You can sign up for the new skeeson, and meet your opponents tonight. And hey, they do regular free skeeball and hot dogs on Tuesdays and Thursdays too. Not bad!
[Via FreeWilliamsburg]
Food & Drink,
Shopping
Park Slope/ Prospect Heights
This is fun. If you buy something at a Fifth Avenue merchant through Feb. 14, you get a free raffle ticket to win a spending spree of up to $1,000 on the Slope’s best shopping strip. That sounds like a mighty fine way to spend an afternoon, maybe even two. Participating places include a whole bunch of shops, restaurants and bars we really like, with the noteworthy absence of Bierkraft. Here’s the list of Fifth Ave. venues where you can pick up a ticket, and All About Fifth has the details on the giveaway.
Chutzpah,
Food & Drink
ReBar photo courtesy of Simply Dazzling Events.
You’ve been there before: unable to work at home, you pop in to the local coffee shop to soak up the wifi and get yourself focused with a cup of joe. The next thing you know, you’re on your third cup, you’ve got the shakes and somehow still aren’t done working. You’ve got to take the edge off somehow, but still don’t want to go home. What’s a girl to do? Fortunately for you, Brooklyn is home to bars that offer wifi AND open early enough to get you back in balance. Happy hour, here you come!
Food & Drink
The speaker's friends eagerly dive into her moose-face stew.
It’s seriously becoming weird food week around here at Brokelyn HQ. First foraged dinners and now a free lecture about making “beaver, bear and moose ‘mouffle.’ ” And some of you thought Brokelandia was made up.
But we started this one, so we’ll finish. Tuesday night (Jan. 31) is the monthly “Masters of Social Gastronomy” workshop presented by the Brooklyn Brainery. The topic is Strange Meats featuring retro food blogger Sarah Lohman of Four Pounds Flour, and this terrifying moose-face stew recipe. Also speaking is the Brainery’s Jonathan Soma, who will discuss unusual meat preparations, “from how to turn jerky into cotton candy to what to do with a pig’s head.” (Is letting the pig keep it out of the question?)
Tuesday, Jan. 31 at 7 p.m., Public Assembly, 70 N. 6th St. in Williamsburg. “Special beverages” available.
Food & Drink
Even the most committed brokavore has an achilles heel. Schmancy ice cream, farm raised this or that, deep-fried anchovy skeletons. Mine is coffee: oily, aromatic, dark roast, whole bean, utter, hopeless snobbery. I’m so pathetic I recently bought a junky little milk frother to elevate the experience. But after running out of the good stuff for the first time in my adult life this week, it was time to suck it up and embark upon a long-overdue Brokelyn taste test: supermarket coffees.
Food & Drink
Downtown
Pine needles or sap en brochette? Prospect Park photo by Karen Orlando, of the Outside Now blog.
The feast-happy foodies over at Issue Project Room tell are sponsoring a free (multi-course!) meal on Feb. 4, featuring foraged and gleaned local plants and animals. We’re not exactly sure what sort of vegetation to expect in the dead of February when even the feral cats are on the DL, so we’ll let hand it over to them:
Interested in eating a foraged meal but don’t have the time/mycological certification/emergency care insurance to forage yourself? Join Spurse at Issue Project Room on 2/4 for a mid-winter multi-course feast comprised of foraged and gleaned local plants and animals in UNIQUE preparations (think novelty, not decompo-stronomy).
Food & Drink,
News
The menu at Qathra
Qathra, the popular Cortelyou Road coffee house, may take over the former Whisk Cafe space at Newkirk and Westminster, the Qathra owner confirmed today. The Whisk space, which has been shuttered since owner Joshua Rubin disappeared on Oct. 31, is hosting a sell-off this weekend to raise money for Rubin’s family and, presumably, clear the way for a new tenant. (Rubin’s murder remains a mystery.) Yasser Habib, AKA Max, the owner of Qathra, told Brokelyn that his lawyers are in negotiation and that he’s “75 percent sure” that the deal is moving forward. A Qathra outpost would be welcome by many neighbors as Max’s first one, which opened on Cortelyou in 2010, was named best coffee shop in NYC by the Daily News last year. More soon…
