Buttermilk Channel NYC

I can't say enough about Buttermilk Channel, the relatively new restaurant in my neighborhood, all the way at the ass end of Court Street just south of where any decent account of Carrol Gardens ends. It's a stone's throw from the "BQE" (bee-que-ee) i.e., the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, which if you stop and listen, you can hear rumbling above.

Proprietor Doug Crowell and Chef Ryan Angulo have pulled off the impossible for this neck of the woods. Quaint yet hip, cozy and uncomfortably loud, jam packed and undeniably good. The housemade pickles are delicious. So are the maple and bacon roasted almonds, and I don't even like nuts. The sweet potato croquettes with goat cheese are amazing. Our selection of East Coast osyters were perfect: clean, briney and fleshy. The duck meatloaf was a heavenly melt in your mouth experience. The ice cream and housemade donuts were a perfect end. I could go on and on, but I'll stop there.

I've come to find I enjoy these semi-cozy almost too loud and certainly too hip for me restaurants far far more than I ever enjoy the Grammery Taverns of the world.

I tasted two wines. A Brooklyn Oenology Merlot 2005 * I found utterly convincing (dark and dry, sparse fruits, but not to everyone's taste) and a 2007 Holdredge Wines Russian River Valley Pinot Noir ** which displayed good acidity in a worn velvet like texture on the tongue, but very light with mild dry spices and mushroom notes as the wine emerged.