I am so excited to tell you about Alma, an out-of-the-way Mexican restaurant in Red Hook. I have been there twice in the last two weeks and both times have enjoyed the inexpensive food, potent margaritas, and their wonderful roof deck!
According to wikipedia, Red Hook, Brooklyn was settled by the Dutch in in 1636 and named "Roode Hoek" after the red clay soil and the point of landing projecting into the East River ("hoek" means point or corner in Dutch). Red Hook is actually a peninsula between the Buttermilk Channel (who knew that there's such a sweetly named channel in Brooklyn!?), the Gowanus Canal, and Gowanus Bay on the south-west edge of downtown Brooklyn. Over the last 400 years, the Dutch moved out, Brooklyn's largest housing project and shipping yards moved in, and in the 1990's, Life Magazine named Red Hook one of the worst neighborhood's in America. Today, while it's still an industrial neighborhood, in typical Brooklyn fashion, Red Hook is also home to many hipsters who have drawn several cool restaurants and bars to the area.
Last Saturday night, we piled into my mom's car for a family outing to Red Hook. Our first stop was dinner at Alma, followed by a trip to the nearby Fairway to help my sister stock up on pantry items, staples, and cleaning supplies for her new apartment (she moved into her new place on Sunday and is now officially an Upper West Sider).
Alma is located in a three-story brick building, right on the East River. The first floor houses the large bar area, which has a ping pong table in the back (a good place to kill time if there's a long wait for the roof deck), the second floor is the main dining room, and the top floor is the enormous open-air roof deck with panoramic views of the Manhattan skyline.
I didn't think Alma took reservations, so I didn't call ahead. (I think I was wrong, so you should give them a call if you don't want to wait for a table.) We arrived around 6:30 and were told there was a 45 minute wait to sit on the roof deck - annoying, but, as you can see, the view (especially at sunset!) is worth the wait. For the record, there would have been no wait if we wanted to sit in the dining room, which resulted in a scuffle with my sister about whether or not to wait for the roof deck. Ultimately, she saw things my way. We gave the hostess a cell phone number, and went downstairs to the bar, and played ping pong until our table was ready, only 15 minutes later.
We started our al fresco dinner with a basket of chips and super-spicy salsa, an order of guacamole, and a special appetizer: a crab and gouda quesadilla. I don't love crab, but it was pretty good. For my entree, I had corn enchiladas stuffed with cheese and portobello mushrooms with a pumpkin seed sauce. The serving was enormous and the enchiladas were delicious.
Judd had grilled garlic and chipotle shrimp with pico de gallo, pickled red onions, chipotle mayo and mango salsa. Despite all of those interesting-sounding accoutrements, he thought the shrimp were quite flavorless and wasn't too impressed.
My mother ordered chicken fajitas (boring!) and found the grilled chicken to be quite dry. I almost never order chicken at Mexican restaurants - I think it always tastes like cat food. But I have had the steak fajitas at Alma before and thought they were tasty, if maybe a little boring.
Kristy ordered a fish special: pan seared dorado with sauteed spinach and some kind of flavored broth and a side of sautéed mushrooms. She thought both were good, not great.
We shared an outstanding tres leches cake for dessert topped with strawberries, shredded coconut and whipped cream. It was an individual cake instead of a slice of a bigger cake, and was not as mushy as the version I made a few weeks ago.
The service at Alma was awful - they need about three more waiters to properly serve all of the tables on the roof deck (two waiters for 80-100 people? really?). And the food was just above-average. But on a mild and breezy August night, when you're sipping a margarita and overlooking lower Manhattan on that roof deck, who really cares?
** (one star for the food and one star for the view)
Details:
187 Columbia Street
Brooklyn, New York
(718) 643-5400
Dinner for four: $180
No comments:
Post a Comment