Bite Of The Day: Dinner At Brooklyn Commune
We’ve been meaning to try out dinner service at Brooklyn Commune (601 Greenwood Avenue on the corner of Prospect Avenue) for a while, and had the chance to do so recently on a quiet Sunday evening. The service, which runs 6-9pm every day except Mondays, does an exceptional job of transforming the friendly neighborhood coffee shop into a nice spot to dine with friends or get cozy with a date.
First to the table at Brooklyn Commune is their bread, salted butter, and olives–so good we forgot to take a picture before we started eating (we promise there’s more bread than shown above). After that, move onto the two-sided menu–on one side, a prix fixe option including choices of appetizer, entree, and dessert; and on the other, basically all of the same items a la carte, plus some extra sides.
We chose, respectively, the fried calamari, duck linguine, and shortbread prix fixe for $25, and the Greek salad, lamb chops (that night’s special), and molten chocolate cake for $40. The calamari came recommended by our waiter (“It’s some of the best calamari I’ve ever had, and I’m Italian”), and was surprisingly light, as were the fresh tomatoes on top–a far cry from the heavy, gut-sticking stuff we’ve felt awful after in the past.
Our salad was also wonderfully fresh, and was served with more olives–this time in paste form–although we wish there was maybe just a little more veggie variety in the dish. Tomatoes aren’t too out there for a Greek salad, right?
The linguine was rich and sumptuous with outstanding textural qualities–and, we think, a good deal included in the prix fixe, as we’ve seen nearby restaurants charge nearly $20 for a fancy pasta dish alone.
Our New Zealand lamb chops were impeccably cooked, drizzled with a rosemary demi-glace, and accordingly served with the restaurant’s cranberry rosemary water. Also on the plate were gorgeous oyster mushrooms and melt-in-your-mouth carrots that made us happy to eat all our vegetables before dessert.
Oh yes, dessert! Brooklyn Commune’s shortbread cookies were buttery and lovely alongside homemade ice cream. Their chocolate cake with toasted marshmallow and salted walnuts was so decadent that, after all those lamp chops and bread, we had to struggle to finish it (but oh, we were going to finish it).
Aside from being delicious, we found the prix fixe to be a good value–at $16 for the linguine, $10 for the calamari, and $7 for the shortbread a la carte totaling $33, we got, well, a bit more than a free dessert.
Brooklyn Commune is BYOB, so you might want to stop up the block at Juice Box (1289 Prospect Avenue between Greenwood Avenue and Reeve Place) beforehand if you’d like some wine to accompany your meal. For more info on what’s for dinner, follow the restaurant on their mouthwatering Instagram or check out their full evening menu here.