Take Root

Take Note, other restaurants.

I hesitate to share this gem with the wider world, but man oh man, this has got to be one of the best meals I've had and I just can't keep it to myself! 

The beautiful simplicity of the menu, along with the fact that they Gave It to us at the end of the meal- To Take! - means that these girls understand today's restaurant explorers, especially the Brooklyn kind.

The Restaurant:
Take Root is tucked away down a residential street in Carroll Gardens? Boerum Hill? Cobble Hill?  I think Cobble Hill.  I think it used to be an old cake shop, with faded novelty Reeses cakes in the window, now restored to a lovely little 14-seater storefront that I could really see myself living in.  And that's the thing: it feels like you're at your friends' house and they're bringing you course after course of pretty dishes. 

The Food:
Everything is perfectly portioned, so that you get a bit of the yolk with the beet and a cocoa nib in each bite until the dish is gone.  There's no tongue without sauce or apple without scallop and this means you get all the complexity in every mouthful.  And it was all beautiful.  By the end of multi-course meals I'm sometimes exhausted and full, but I was so happy every time something new came out of that teeny kitchen, followed by Chef Elise to explain it to us.  My favorite was perhaps the smoked yolk from the beetroot dish- the flavors were so unique and exciting- but I would take seconds on any of the dishes.  

The Menu:
You can tell by the menu that you are in for a sophisticated meal... except that the menu didn't come out until the end, so everything was a surprise.  I'd eat like this every time at a restaurant, if I could: just bring me whatever you do best or whatever you found at the market today- hooray!  Some of the dishes were plays on things- the "fish n' chips" vinegar potato croquette, for instance- and others followed a formula without emulating a dish- the chicken liver "taco" with butternut tortilla had absolutely no Mexican food influence whatsoever, apart from the delivery.  The menu itself is twee, like other poetically simplistic menus about town, but it's really enough to remind you of each flavor combination- because the dishes can't really be explained as metaphors.  "Interpretation of French Onion Soup" sounds way wrong on this menu, though that's almost how Elise described it to us.  I was just so happy for my restaurant memento- not to mention the meal itself- but this way I can recall the incredible flavors just a little easier.