What’s On Your List Of Essential Fort Greene And Clinton Hill Restaurants?

If you had to list the restaurants that are the heart and soul of the neighborhood, the places that we just couldn’t do without, the places that help define what Fort Greene or Clinton Hill is, what would they be?

The Village Voice recently put together their own list that covers the entire borough — 99 Essential Restaurants in Brooklyn rounds up places “that define the fabric of this singular locale.” In our area, they only highlighted three, maybe four, spots, but they are definitely among the best:

• Madiba (195 DeKalb Avenue) may have just launched a sibling site in Harlem, but make no mistake, big sister is going strong. Built from scratch, with love, the Voice gushes about the importance of community to Madiba’s identity. As owner Mark Henegan says, “it’s the community that makes the restaurant.”
• Roman’s (243 DeKalb Avenue) pretty much makes seasonal and carefully curated ingredients into an art form, as both Secretary of State John Kerry and the Voice notes. “All the little things, in other words, done right,” they say, spot on.
• Locanda Vini e Olii (129 Gates Avenue) is summed up as “Italian cuisine in a converted pharmacy” by the Voice, yet it is so much more than that, between the housemade noodles and salt-free bread, and the friendly, homey atmosphere.
• Junior’s (386 Flatbush Avenue Extension) is located on Fort Greene’s border with Downtown Brooklyn, but the 60-plus-year-old restaurant/cheesecake juggernaut remains a community institution, retaining what the Voice notes is “its old-school feel” that third-generation owner Alan Rosen says he “take[s] quite seriously,” despite increasing pressure to sell in the face of rising developments all around.

So we’re wondering — what would be on your list of essential Fort Greene and Clinton Hill restaurants? What are the places we eat at that make our neighborhoods both home and our home away from home?

Writing contributed by Mary Bakija.