Park Slope Reader

Eat Local

Olivia’s Kitchen : Spice Roasted Delicate Squash with Pepita Vinaigrette and Dried Cranberries

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preheat oven to 400 degrees

3 Delicata Squashes

2 tablespoons of brown sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

1 clove of garlic, minced

2 tablespoons of olive oil

Salt and Pepper

Pepita Vinaigrette

1/4 cup of toasted pepitas

2 teaspoons of ground turmeric

1 clove of garlic

1/8 cup of champagne Vinegar

1/4 cup olive oil

Salt and Pepper

1/4 cup of Dried Cranberries

Slice the delicata squash into one inch thick slices and use a spoon to scrape out the seeds.  Combine the sugar, spices, olive oil, garlic together.  Toss the squash with the spice mixture and spread out on a sheet pan.  Place in oven and roast until browned, approximately  15-20 minutes.

For the vinaigrette, combine all the ingredients in a container and use a hand held blender to puree all of it, (or use a food processor or regular blender)

To serve place squash on a platter, drizzle with vinaigrette and sprinkle with the dried cranberries.

Eating Local: A Cup for Our Neighbors Kos Kaffe

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When you walk through the glass door into Kos Kaffe, you’re hit with gentle smells of roasting coffee, smoke off the griddle, and flowers. Seafoam green paint accents the otherwise white walls. Plenty of sunlight gets in through the nearly floor-to-ceiling windows facing 5th Avenue. There are wood floors, a few large wooden tables for sharing, wooden stools and chairs. Leafy plants and, currently, corn and baby squash, adorn the shelves and furniture. Large mirrors reflect the incandescent lighting, chandelier, art and knickknacks. Flowers potted in glass jars run down the window ledge. Kos Kaffe has the cozy, modest, yet eclectic feel of a country home. 

In this space, Allon Azulai and Sarah Huck Azulai, husband-and-wife owners of Kos Kaffe, have been serving delicious coffee and food to the Park Slope community since 2012. The atmosphere is exactly what they had in mind when the idea first came to them. “We were striving for warmth, conviviality, and communion,” Sarah says. “No doubt I was probably picturing my favorite way to experience a café — a rainy day, a little jazz, a friend across the table, a hot mug between my hands.” Indeed, when you sit down, you’ll find strangers sharing a table to work, friends meeting over coffee or a meal, a group of parents in the midst of a discussion, children close by. Many small details also contribute to this sense of familiarity and communion. In front of the royal green drum roaster, hand written signs describe the five different types of freshly roasted beans offered; another placard, next to the sugar and honey, lets you know the straws are made from corn and are 100% compostable; the card attached to the coffee tree (which stands next to the counter and the small, open kitchen) explains how it got there, where the fruit, that eventually becomes coffee, comes from. It’s this attention to each detail, the sense that everything has been carefully thought over — in addition to the quality of the coffee and food — that helps you feel you’re in good hands. 

Allon has been a coffee roaster for decades and Sarah has a deep and varied culinary background. At the time of the café’s inception, she was working full-time, writing a cookbook, and developing recipes as a freelancer. Frequently working in coffee shops, she became tired of the usual fare and wanted to create something different: “…food that you might make at home for breakfast or lunch if you had the time and skills to do so.” What you find are big, lush salads, tasty sandwiches and breakfast dishes, soups that, like everything else, are made from scratch. Many of the ingredients employed are sourced from farms and producers in the surrounding areas, or found at the local Greenmarket. Specials rotate based on what’s available. Recently, there was a market salad made with kale, radicchio, apple, fennel, bulgur and Mimolette cheese; also, a simple but decadent plate of ricotta, plums, and honey over toast. The coffee is, of course, roasted on site, and Allon works to source quality beans that promote fair practices. 

On the café’s website, it states that from the beginning, “…the aspiration was simple: give our Brooklyn neighbors a truly local, family-owned coffeehouse to call home.” How else, besides the quality of the product and friendly atmosphere, is this achieved? By not just working within the community, but with the community. One way they do this is by collaborating with other businesses in Park Slope and surrounding neighborhoods. They get their almond milk, for example, from Trans Am Café in Brooklyn, and Kos Kaffe roasts their coffee in return. They buy their flours and other grains from the Greenmarket Regional Grains Project, and Sarah does an occasional cooking demo for them in the market. Kos Kaffe participates in, and is one of the pickup locations for, the community-supported fishery program run by Mermaid’s Garden, a weekly fish share bringing sustainable seafood to Brooklyn. Kos Kaffe takes part in the Taste of Fifth every year and, on October 17th, will join the Park Slope Civil Council’s Food for Thought. And events are constantly in the works at the café: open-mic nights, art shows, and pop-up dinners. 

With any kind of new business, it can be tricky to grab footing, “…to gain the trust of a community, to demonstrate that your values aren’t just lip service, that you operate with mutual concerns and interests in mind, that your business reflects something deeply felt, not just a livelihood,” in Sarah’s words. In the six-plus-years since its opening, that genuine quality has been persistent, and is one of the reasons Kos Kaffe has remained such a hub. “Park Slope is such a vibrant, creative, intelligent community,” Sarah says, “and I have pretty much developed all of my relationships standing behind the counter or clearing someone’s dishes and connecting with them in a neighborly way. Over the years, that builds on itself organically.” Even if it is your first time walking through the glass door into Kos Kaffe, not yet knowing anyone, that sense of community is felt and will be there to come back to.

Photographs by Daniel Noonan

Eating Local: Durian Ice Cream is Real

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A Chat with Jonathan Bayer of SKYICE

Here’s a combo you don’t see every day, at least not in the same restaurant: Thai food and ice cream. While you might venture for this creamy dessert after dinner, SkyIce gives you both entities in one sitting. Owned by husband and wife team Jonathan Bayer and Sutheera Denprapa, their spot on 5th Avenue serves savory Thai plates and ice cream flavors inspired by the like, with offerings like durian, white miso almond, green curry, and more. We sat down with co-owner Bayer to talk about the restaurant, his upbringing in the New York culinary world, and why he and Sutheera feel at home in the Park Slope neighborhood.

Can you tell me a little bit about your background in food and how you got interested in Thai cuisine?

Well, I have always been interested in food! I love to eat. Definitely love to eat. Growing up, we used to go out to eat quite a bit. My mother was a fantastic cook, had some amazing home cooked meals but we’d also go out to eat so I was always interested in restaurants and how they functioned. So I was exposed to very good food at an early age, which helped round out the palette. We also traveled a lot so I was eating food across the pond, on the West Coast, so I was exposed to a lot of different cuisines at an early age.

Are you from the West Coast?

No, no. Born and raised in New York. My family’s been here for about 150 years. Actually my great grandmother, when they opened up the tenement museum on the lower east side, she was honored as one of the living remaining original tenants of the actual Tenement building. Like, she was actually born in the museum. Where the museum stands was her apartment when she was a little girl so we date back to then.

So I’ve always had a love for food. I worked as a bus boy in high school at an amazing steakhouse in Huntington, Long Island and I waitered in restaurants and after graduating school I actually went to Wall Street. So finance is my background. And then, after various roles throughout finance I decided to go back into food.

What got you interested in Thai food?

Well my wife is Thai, born and raised in Bangkok. We actually started with ice cream in mind. My wife is a self-taught ice cream maven. She’s an artist by trade so she’s wildly creative and thinks up these flavors. But she’s also a huge ice cream fan so she started wanting to eat ice cream that she could not find on the market and her first flavor was Thai tea. She couldn’t find it anywhere and one day she woke up and was just like, “I’m gonna make Thai tea ice cream.”

So yeah she whipped up a batch, it took her about 6 months to make and perfect the formula and then we had this amazing homemade ice cream. We started to get really positive feed back from family and friends and we decided to just go for it and open up a shop. We weren’t sure how the winters were going to treat us. It turns out ice cream is a 12-month season but in order for us to kind of hedge we said, “Let’s offer some food.” So we offered a very small menu, some curry, some noodles, some appetizers, and we started to get a really great response from the food. So we said, “Alright, let’s expand this!” into what we have today, which is this really large, expansive, authentic, very traditional Thai food menu.

Did you learn the ropes of Thai cooking from your wife?

I would say I can cook. I don’t cook here. I would love to take credit but a lot of the recipes have my influence, my palette, what I like to eat. It’s kind of incorporated that into how we serve, the different flavors I really want to highlight. Thai food is so eclectic, there’s so many different flavors going on. And New York has many many Thai restaurants so I think through the volume, it’s lot some of its cachet. We wanted to kind of bring that back and pick up on the kaffir lime, the lemongrass, the tamarind, really get in touch with those amazing flavors that all kind of mix to make this amazing cuisine. So my influence is more in the recipes rather than doing the cooking.

How did you come to choose the Park Slope neighborhood for the business?

So we just celebrated seven years here. It didn’t look like this eight years ago when we first moved in so the neighborhood here in the North Slope. South slope was always very strong but over the last 7 to 8 years it’s really grown up around us. We looked all over. We hit it with this one. We knew we wanted to be in a family neighborhood because we had ice cream and we wanted something that was definitely family-friendly so we knew we wanted to be in that type of neighborhood. Trial and error found this location.

What would you say is one of your highlight ice cream flavors?

You know we get this question all the time and it’s such a hard question to answer because there are literally 15 flavors. We’ll have groups of people that come in just for durian ice cream. It’s popular, durian is a great flavor. There’s Thai tea, there’s the raspberry cilantro, the cucumber lime, white miso with almonds, the banana Nutella, the Belgian chocolate brownie, the roasted Thai coconut, Thai coffee. These are all really popular flavors.

 

 

Eating Local: Prospect Park’s Smorgasburg Market

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Another Summer in Foodie Paradise

There’s two kinds of foodies this day in age – the Instagrammer and the culinary enthusiast. However, both breeds commonly intersect, especially at New York City’s Smorgasburg, one of the biggest foodie festivals in the city. Park Slope is lucky enough to host one of its two weekly locations, and this summer has kicked off another round of good eats and photo-worthy treats. 

Smorgasburg started as a spinoff of Brooklyn Flea in 2011, a similar vendor market of niche artisanal finds and locally made crafts founded by entrepreneurs Eric Demby and Jonathan Butler. This food paradise is now the largest open-air food market in America and attracts 20-30,000 people to Brooklyn every weekend, with additional locations now in Downtown Los Angeles and Osaka, Japan. Hailed by The New York Times as “The Woodstock of Eating,” you’re guaranteed to find something offbeat and unique in the mass of 100+ vendors that roll through these spots regularly, many of which are local businesses – a way to sample through what you may end up visiting after hours. Treats from Ethiopian food and locally roasted coffee to short ribs and bone marrow are just a couple of the many items available, and some places booth on a regular basis too. If you’re too full to munch on that Dough donut today, there’s a good chance they’ll be around the following week serving up the same sweet calories.

As a somewhat newcomer to New York (I’m coming up on my first year anniversary this August), I wasn’t completely sure how crowded my first visit to Prospect Park’s Smorgasburg would be. Although I’d previously attended the Downtown LA market, I had no idea what to expect from one of the original locations. How many vendors would I see? Would it be packed despite an unusually chilly summer Sunday afternoon? 

Here’s the thing about food and New York though: You can’t get in the way of this essential “pairing.” Floods of people still flocked the booths with two hours left to spare in this seven-hour-long weekly affair, cold winds blowing through jean shorts and blouses on the brink of rain. A good 45 booths were still busy preparing foods like squid okonomiyaki and Indonesian coffee cocktails as people munched and Snapchatted and Instagrammed away, many of whom brought their pups along for the ride. An outdoor experience in New York is always a chance to bring a furry friend, essentially.

I decided to grab an entrée and a dessert – my poisons ended up being Mighty Quinn’s hearty and delightful short rib burger and Ube Kitchen’s vegan ube coconut custard flan. Both photogenic and delicious, I was easily stuffed within an hour.

Some things you may want to mentally prepare for upon visiting Smorgasburg are the lines. While you have a massive selection of foods to choose from, the saying is true: the longer the line is, the chance it’s much better too. At Smorgasburg, this is certainly the case. Come hungry but also ready to wait. Additionally, while many booths offer both cash and credit options, a good handful of vendors are still cash-only. While there are portable ATMs available, save yourself a few bucks worth of ATM fees and make sure it goes towards your treats instead! Lastly, these are not bodega takeaway prices. While many goods are served fast food style, you’ll still be paying close to the same amount you’d be spending at a restaurant with table service. The trade for this? Many foods are exclusively vendor/food trucks, so you won’t be able to find them anywhere else!

Happy munching, fellow foodie friends!

Eating Local: New in the Neighborhood

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MOTHERDOUGH PIZZA

72 7th Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn

929-295-0012  website: https://motherdough.pizza

 

In a city where pizza reigns superior, newcomer Motherdough makes it possible to continue this motto even if you’re on a health kick. 

A filling yet calorie-light endeavor, Motherdough’s naturally leavened pizza doughs come in a variety of guilt-free crusts including barley, whole wheat and even gluten free. And while many of us may shudder at the idea of a grease-free pizza, Motherdough’s craftsmanship actually manages to retain the “fluff” of a crust despite its “GF” nature.

Motherdough’s interior is playful and clean. While the space offers limited seating, perhaps 10 to 15 people at most, the building itself feels spacious. A massive kitchen reveals pizzas at work in the rustic ovens, and splashes of bright yellow and white cover the walls and tables. 

A stacked menu with fresh, light ingredients gives you plenty of variety in your guilt-free pizza experience while still staying true to the dish’s true Italian roots. The selections are organized into whole wheat, barley, and gluten free dough. Treats like the burrata & crudo di parma and margherita keep things classic, but if you want to get a pizza unique to the restaurant, try the veggie pizza with hummus, toasted almond slices, and more. The spinach and shrimps pizza also offers some interesting toppings (mustard and peanuts on top of what’s mentioned in its name). 

We decided to test the gluten-free margherita, the only gluten-free pizza on the menu. After tossing in a couple extras of the prosciutto crudo parma PDO, we were stuffed by the end of it. Although these are allegedly personal pan pizzas, you could easily split them too. Even though we were filled, it wasn’t in such a way that was over-bloating or greasy. Each bite felt fresh, and we didn’t leave feeling like we had just eaten 1000 calories. Instead, we felt ready to conquer the day, energized by a wholesome meal.

While Motherdough won’t give you the exact satisfaction of a craving you may be looking for with a traditional pizza, it certainly provides the opportunity to go out for a meal without ruining your diet.

Olivia’s Kitchen: Hibiscus Margarita

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I love a good Margarita.  The drink gets a bad rap because the standard chain restaurant recipe can be so sugary and high calorie but a well made one is simple and uses only fresh juice and a small amount of sweetener.  This hibiscus one is my new favorite.  Aside from a delicious flavor, the color is incredibly dark and beautiful.  The hibiscus syrup supplies all the sweetness and flavor needed.

 

Hibiscus Margarita

Hibiscus Syrup

(hibiscus leaves or tea, sugar, water)

100% Agave Silver Tequila

Lime

Orange

To make a hibiscus syrup make a strong tea of hibiscus leaves in 8oz of water.  Add in 1 cup of sugar and gently heat until the sugar is completely dissolved.

In a shaker- fill with ice.  Add 4 tablespoons of tequila, a squeeze of fresh lime, and squeeze of fresh orange juice, 1/4 cup of the hibiscus syrup and shake very well.  It can be served straight up by straining or over ice.  

The hibiscus syrup also makes a delicious non alcoholic drink by simply adding seltzer and a squeeze of lime.

Eating Local: A Floral & Fruity Precious Pup

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A Summer Cocktail Recipe From Dirty Precious

With climbing temperatures and increasing humidity, New York becomes more and more of a summer playground for drinking festivities. For something sweet and icy this season, take a few notes from the all-female team at Dirty Precious, a cocktail bar in Gowanus that serves up casual yet delightful sips and bites for the neighborhood. They bring you Precious Pup, a refreshing and versatile treat that’s floral, fruity, and boozy (co-owner Katipai Richardson Wilson recommends supersizing this cocktail for a punch bowl or pitcher). Feel free to substitute the recommended spirit with gin, tequila, or mescal too.

Precious Pup (not your Grandmas’s Boozehound)

1.5 Oz Vodka

.75 Oz lavender syrup

1 Oz grapefruit juice

.25 Oz lime juice

To make your own lavender syrup, steep 1/4 cup of lavender petals in 1 cup of hot water for 10 minutes. Strain and add 1 cup white sugar. Stir until dissolved.

Shake ingredients and strain over rocks into a Collins glass. 

Top with soda water and garnish with a grapefruit twist.

enjoy!

Eating Local: Four & Twenty Blackbirds: Strawberry Balsamic Pie

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Let’s be honest — Whether you’re a fan of sweets or not, who doesn’t love pie? Four & Twenty Blackbirds has become a staple in the Gowanus neighborhood for both their savory and sugary concoctions. Owners Melissa and Emily, who learned the tricks of the trade from their Grandma Liz, got their start building custom pies out of their Brooklyn apartment before establishing a flagship location in 2010. Now, Four & Twenty Blackbirds is easily the top spot in Brooklyn for pies. 

As the weather slowly warms, the time proves to be more than perfect for a fruit pie. The ladies have shared their recipe for the Strawberry Balsamic Pie for us, whose combination of strawberries and balsamic vinegar prove to make for an overall mouthwatering, satisfying treat.

Makes one 9-inch pie

Serves 8 to 10

Ingredients

¼ cup plus 3 tablespoons granulated sugar

2 pounds fresh strawberries, rinsed and quartered (5 to 6 cups)

1 small baking apple (such as Northern Spy or Golden Delicious)

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

2 dashes Angostura bitters 

¾ cup packed light brown sugar

3 tablespoons ground arrowroot 

2 grinds fresh black pepper, fine setting

½ teaspoon kosher salt

Egg wash (1 large egg whisked with 1 teaspoon water and a pinch of salt)

Demerara sugar, for finishing

Recipe

· Have ready and refrigerated one pastry-lined 9-inch pie pan and pastry round or lattice to top (see page TK).

· Sprinkle 3 tablespoons of the granulated sugar over the strawberries. Stir gently to combine and allow the fruit to macerate at room temperature for 30 minutes to 1 hour.

· Peel the apple and shred on the large holes of a box grater. Drain the strawberries of excess liquid and combine with the shredded apple. Sprinkle on the balsamic vinegar and Angostura bitters.

· In a separate bowl, mix together the remaining ¼ cup granulated sugar, brown sugar, arrowroot, black pepper, and salt. Gently fold the sugar mixture into the strawberry mixture. Pour the filling into the refrigerated pie shell, arrange the lattice or pastry round on top, and crimp as desired.

· Chill the pie in the refrigerator for 10 to 15 minutes to set the pastry.

· Meanwhile, position the oven racks in the bottom and center positions, place a rimmed baking sheet on the bottom rack  and preheat the oven to 425°F.

· Brush the pastry with the egg wash; if your pie has a lattice top, be careful not to drag the filling onto the pastry (it will burn). Sprinkle with the desired amount of demerara sugar.

· Place the pie on the rimmed baking sheet on the lowest rack of the oven.  Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until the pastry is set and beginning to brown. Lower the oven temperature to 375°F, move the pie to the center oven rack, and continue to bake until the pastry is a deep golden brown and the juices are bubbling throughout, 35 to 40 minutes longer.

· Allow to cool completely on a wire rack, 2 to 3 hours. Serve slightly warm or at room temperature.

· The pie will keep refrigerated for 3 days or at room temperature for 2 days.

 

Good Wine, Good Company, Good Welcome

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A FEW OF THE BEST WINE SHOPS IN PARK SLOPE

Wine is new to me. However, coming from a specialty coffee background, I’ve naturally found myself drawn to the art of craft beverages, the art of curating and taste development. That being said, the world of craft beverages can be just as daunting as the culinary world. With so many flavor palettes, styles, and regions to choose from, any novice or expert can understand the importance of personalization when it comes to picking just the right vino to sip on – whether you’re looking to pair a bottle with food or want to try something new. Park Slope’s independently driven small business scene proves to be perfect for either party. With a small but mighty set of personally curated wines, the neighborhood’s friendly and knowledgeable business owners will easily help you pick out your next favorite bottle – and the one after that. 

 

Big Nose, Full Body

Situated right nearby the park on 7th Avenue, Big Nose, Full Body is an intimate wine shop that’s constantly bringing in new vines AND discounting you as an incentive to try them out. The gang regularly holds tastings every Saturday afternoon, plus additional ones as announced. The sun-filled space has a massive variety of both regions and price ranges to choose from, and the “staff picks” list is definitely worth taking a peek at for recommendations. If you’re on the go, chilled wines are at the ready.

Good Wine

Tastefully put (pun intended), 5th Avenue’s Good Wine is known as a “food lover’s wine shop.” A friendly staff of strong female entrepreneurs run this shop, a space that they took over nearly three years ago from its previous ownership. Not only do the ladies offer regular tastings of their selections (every weekday at 5:30pm and weekends at 4:00pm) they also have food pairing and education classes for the public. Finishing touches include homey seasonal décor and cookbooks resting above the shelves of wine selections, a mix of the owners’ own selections and neighborhood contributions. Deliveries within Park Slope require a two-bottle minimum – not too hard, right?

 

ACME Wine

ACME’s former origins as a 1930s deli are subtly hinted throughout the store; checkerboard floors, window signage for butter and cheese posted at the entrance. This cozy shop offers a large array of affordable wines from small producers around the world, and incorporates an entire wall of bottles under $14. The team also offers an extensive array of spirits that are Brooklyn and New York local, from gin to rum and whiskey, plus sake and cider for when you’re looking for sweeter buzzes. Join the email list to take advantage of tastings, plus the no-minimum wine deliveries till closing.

 

il Vino Torchio

Il Vino Torchio translates to “the wine press” in Italian, and ironically enough doubles as the namesake for this small but mighty wine nook on 4th Avenue. Argentinian-born owner Marcelo Torchio spent years strolling through grape vines back home before opening this spot in Park Slope in 2011. Hand-picked with his clientele in mind, Marcelo brings a mix of both old world and new world wines and offers tastings every Friday evening to showcase select vinos. He also curates a small but mighty selection of New York-made spirits.

 

 

 

 

From Sardinia to South Brooklyn: A Conversation with Convivium Osteria’s Carlo and Michelle Pulixi

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In a sea of new restaurants that rapidly open and close at a one-year-or-less pace, Park Slope’s Convivium Osteria has kept things going on 5th Avenue since 2000. Co-owner Carlo Pulixi notes, “This part of the neighborhood, I would say we were the very first. There were Spanish bodegas but nothing of what you see today. It was totally different.” The rustic, Southern Italian restaurant brings a little slice of Carlo’s Sardinia roots to Park Slope, a menu filled with fresh Mediterranean pasta and meat dishes. “It wasn’t really that I invented anything, more re-created. We brought it back to its origins,” Pulixi says. Co-owner and wife Michelle Pulixi met Carlo while working at Il Buco in the East Village, and the two decided that her Park Slope neighborhood would be the second home to showcase Carlo’s own home roots, along with Michelle’s Latin American family background. Today, you can still find many of the same menu items from when Convivium Osteria first opened nearly 20 years ago. We chatted with the owners about their experiences in the food industry and what they each love about Park Slope. 

Can you tell me a little bit about your background and how you got involved in the food industry?

Michelle: I’ve been in the food restaurant industry since I was 12, where I worked on weekends at my best friend’s moms apple pie shop, sometimes at the counter, sometimes making pies. Since then I have always just been working my way up at different restaurants until I ended up in NYC and within 6 months of moving here I met Carlo at a restaurant I was working at and 1 year later we started looking for a place to open up together. 2 years later we had Convivium. I worked along side him all the way through, he is the main brain behind it all, and I am good a supporting and giving fresh ideas and adding artistic touches. We raised our kids in our apartment above the restaurant and it is really a family thing. Our son is just about ready to start working at Convivium in about 1 year, but they have always helped in setting up and doing little chores.

Carlo: Well I’m from Italy. Sardinia. I spend half of my teens to half of them in Roma before coming to the United States. And since I’ve been in the United States I’ve always worked in restaurants. And it’s not that hard for me, came kind of natural. With a number of partners, I opened a restaurant in the city before coming here to Brooklyn, which that’s the time that I met my wife Michelle. I don’t know, it just comes naturally to me, the restaurant business. 

 

How did you help decide to move Convivium to Park Slope?

Carlo: When I met Michelle, she used to live here in Park Slope. I had never set foot in Brooklyn till then. Came to this neighborhood, got off at Grand Army Plaza, and fell in love with it. It was spring, the trees were green and all that. The neighborhood and the tree-lined streets, the sloping streets, the beautiful townhouses, and then, after almost 10 years in New York City, the kind of quietness. We lived very close to the park. It felt very great. We were planning on moving to Europe then really fell in love with it so we decided to open the restaurant here.

Michelle: We ended up in Park Slope because I lived here since 1998 and we both loved the neighborhood. Also, it had become impossible for little guys to open anything in Manhattan. Rents were reasonable back then in Park Slope, haha! We had very little money and had to squeeze everything in order to open up shop. Park Slope had a very cozy neighborhood feel, we felt at home here.

What do you think makes Convivium stand out from other restaurants in the neighborhood?

Michelle: What I think makes Convivium stand out is how when you enter the front door of our restaurant, you leave the hustle bustle of the city outside and, like a time portal, enter into a very rustic and cozy embracing atmosphere, at least I hope people do, that was our goal. A place where people can feel loved and appreciated, from the love we put into the food, to the setting and the service. Carlo is very keen to details and consistency at every level, from the wines he chooses to offer, to where he places a copper pot to shine just right, to quality and freshness of the produce and meat we offer, to the very rare and special wild fennel pollen that he chooses to spice a special pasta with. He was raised by farmers and chefs in Italy, so he has a lot of knowledge of the old world to bring to us.