January 5,
I had dinner in my own neighborhood of Park Slope, Brooklyn, for a change, but it was still work-related. I ate with the Rob Chobor, one of the owners of Black Pearl, which is located where an award-winning pizza place named Lento's used to be.
The big pizza oven's still intact, but Rob seemed more interested in having me try the appetizers, so I had Caribbean ribs with spicy mango duck sauce, mini Maine crab cakes with tartar sauce and baby octopus in port over microgreens.
The restaurant's been open for two and a half months, and Rob says business has been good, but now that it's slowing down he's trying to drum up press. With salad, pizza, sandwiches, signature risotto and the like, mostly in the $12-$15 range, it's certainly a neighborhood restaurant, not a destination one, especially since it's off of dowdy 7th Avenue — an Upper West Side colony — rather than hipper 5th.
And I wonder if press can really drum up business for a neighborhood restaurant.
Apropos of nothing, here are the two best quotes from the past day or so:
1) "Philadelphia's the capital of Camden."
– a Philadelphia restaurant consultant on why the city has a worse inferiority complex than Boston, capital of New England, with regard to New York.
2) "Your optimism about current developments always surprises me. I think you can sustain it only because of a teleological fallacy that Immanuel Wallerstein calls the 'developmentalist illusion.'"
– from an otherwise really polite discussion about globalization and food on the ListServ of the Association for the Study of Food and Society.
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Facebook
Twitter Updates
About the Author
Bret Thorn
Bret Thorn is senior food editor of Nation’s Restaurant News with responsibility for spotting and reporting on culinary trends. He joined the magazine in 1999 after spending about five years as a journalist in Thailand.
A graduate of Tufts University in Medford, Mass., Thorn also studied French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine in Paris. He studied in China for a year, too, and now lives in Brooklyn.
Bret Thorn is senior food editor of Nation’s Restaurant News with responsibility for spotting and reporting on culinary trends. He joined the magazine in 1999 after spending about five years as a journalist in Thailand.
A graduate of Tufts University in Medford, Mass., Thorn also studied French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine in Paris. He studied in China for a year, too, and now lives in Brooklyn.
E-mail him at bret.thorn@penton.com
Most popular posts in the past month
Most popular posts of all time
Followers
More NRN Blogs
Links
Blog Archive
-
▼
2006
(158)
-
▼
January
(15)
- What I learned at Dani
- Momoya
- Tall poppy syndrome
- hat trick
- kolivada macchi and nargisi kofta, washed down wit...
- My two bathrooms
- My new keychain
- dinner at last
- berenjena = eggplant
- vine-ripened
- I'm becoming a big fan of Margaritas
- The many uses of ranch dressing
- Black Pearl
- Drinking what you write
- Waterfowl week
-
▼
January
(15)
Posts
1 comment:
This seems to be January 5th 2006 I assume. Yes Bob didn't push on the press instead people would come and try the place and tell other and next think you know they love it. Lots of delivery from the neighbor even when they don't feel like coming out to the restaurant.
It's July 07 and it has because a Saturday night scene with champagne parties and art shows and bands... a new place for the NY party goers to go check out when they want to try another neighborhood and restaurant in their area.
More people interest brought the press there without trying too hard now. Result and new coordination of a great kitchen stuff, active and creativ eson, great publicist, great customer service, great customers and great food.
Post a Comment