We have been spending quite a bit of time and money exploring the ever-expanding Wiliamsburg restaurant scene. I feel that every time I leave my apartment I see yet another facade under construction. Just today, I spotted a sign going up around the corner on S3rd. I hear that the chef from the rabbithole is opening a very tiny restaurant called bistro petite. (seems like the perfect name) looking forward to that…. At any rate I deeply enjoy this game of guessing what kind of restaurant it will be and whether or not it will be a place that I frequent, or better yet order delivery from. Anyway, I digress….on to the review.
It seems that the new trend, which we welcome with open arms, is our favorite Manhattan restaurants creating Brooklyn offspring. The latest is Isa, a collaboration between Taavo Somer from Freemans and Ignacio Mattos, the chef from il Buco
We have been eyeing this restaurant for a while and were thrilled to finally make time to try it out. We bought a nice bottle of spanish wine at the mediocre wine store nearby (the restaurant is currently BYOB) and headed to fill our stomachs.
First let me say that the interior is absolutely stunning!!!! I used to work as an architect/designer in nyc before turning interactive designer and seeing this space made me want to go back to my prior profession of long terrible hours and minimal pay. (thankfully this feeling only lasted the duration of the meal…) They really did a spectacular job renovating this former carriage house. They took great care combining beautiful salvaged wood from god knows where, with the original wood structure. The results are a strange but wonderfully blurry hybrid of old and new. Sadly they mentioned that we should not take pics of the interior which frustrated us given that was what we loved most about this place. (…we had to post a small interior shot, sorry)
The menu at Isa is very unique. It took me an unusually long time looking over the small 10 or so plate menu before I got a sense of what it was all about. This is strange because I always know what I want. After giving it a great deal of thought about the plates, Jose and I placed our order with the very charismatic waiter: Treviso, nut cheese, granola, the Raw scallops, the sardine skeleton, and the rib eye. The favorites from the list were by far the Treviso and the Sardine.
The raw scallop (seen below) was clearly very fresh but sadly lacked in flavor. The Rib eye was high quality meat, but nothing about it blew our mind. The sardine (something jose seems to order at every restaurant) was delicious but a tad bit to salty. We did however like the playfulness of the dish and found the head to be incredibly crunchy and tasty.
Overall we enjoyed the experience and the environment/vibe of the place. We are looking forward to trying it again once they have found their groove in the kitchen .
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