Back to Brooklyn
81 Clarence St., 613-699-6999,
backtobrooklyn.ca
Open:
for takeout and patio service, Wednesday 4 p.m. to 10 p.m., Thursday 4 p.m. to midnight, Friday and Saturday noon to 2 a.m., Sunday noon to midnight, closed Monday and Tuesday
Prices:
mains $16 to $45
Access:
steps into restaurant
One night during this past weekend’s heatwave, we decided to try a brand new restaurant as it coped with some brand new circumstances.
Normally, which is to say before the arrival in March of COVID-19, I gave a just-opened restaurant a month to work out its kinks. But since life in pandemic times is anything but normal, and because we were keen, if a little apprehensive, to dine on a restaurant’s patio, we went last Friday to Back to Brooklyn in the ByWard Market.
You have to feel for any recently opened small business that must now square its ambitions with the demands of limiting the spread of a lethal virus. Back to Brooklyn, which previously was part of the building that housed Stella Osteria, likely wanted to be another place on Clarence Street for the young and hip to congregate care-free and en masse to enjoy food, cocktails and bottle service into the weekend wee hours. Instead, its arrival has been more low-key and even a little surreal.
About a month ago, it opened to offer food to go. On June 12, it and its neighbouring businesses began serving customers on patios. At Back to Brooklyn, we walked through the narrow, empty dining room to a smaller lounge-y back patio that seated roughly 16 and felt intimate despite the required rigours of physical distancing.
In place of menus, there were QR codes on our tables to be scanned that would direct cellphone browsers to the restaurant’s online menu. There were also new bottles of hand sanitizer on each table. While we weren’t required to wear masks, the servers accessorized with PPE face shields.
“You’re rocking that visor,” one of my dining companions said to our server.
“Thanks for saying that,” the server replied.
Service, here and elsewhere, would seem to be something that needs recalibration because of COVID-19. At Back to Brooklyn, our servers were friendly, knowledgeable and attentive. To help us and our servers mutually keep our distance, we were provided with a carafe of water to use for refilling. But we were also visited by one of the restaurant’s owners who was chatty and welcoming, but also unmasked and unshielded and who got a little too close for comfort.
While Back to Brooklyn’s menu is a concise listing of perhaps a half-dozen mains and starters, it is still more interesting than a lot of the patio fare in the ByWard Market. The restaurant’s chef is Warren Sutherland, whose long career in Ottawa includes co-owning Sweetgrass Aboriginal Bistro in the 1990s and more recently his now-shuttered Sutherland restaurant on Beechwood Avenue. The four main courses that we tried were artfully presented, directly flavourful examples of casual fine dining, enlivened by small flourishes and accents.
“Duck rice” ($25) was not duck fried rice as I might have guessed, but rather a fine confit duck leg on a wee timbale of brown rice with tasty Asian add-ins including pickled mushrooms, bok choy and more.
The vegetarian at our table opted for and was well pleased by the pan-seared cauliflower steak ($24), which was the centrepiece of a splashy, somewhat haphazard looking plate that also included purple cauliflower puree, tempura cauliflower and pickled cauliflower.
Of the free desserts, we thought the sour cherry and blueberry cheesecakes were best by a considerable margin. Back to Brooklyn also offers two desserts that meet keto-diet standards, a cheesecake and a carrot cake. Neither made us want to convert to keto eating for pleasure’s sake, especially when compared to the outstanding classic cheesecake, whose evocations of New York ostensibly lined up with the restaurant’s loose Brooklyn theme.
The restaurant had received its liquor license just days before our visit, we were told. So far, its cocktail offerings are classic ones, and we had a standard Old-Fashioned ($14) and passable glass of sangria ($12).
When he stopped by our table, the restaurant’s owner mentioned that he hoped to convert his roof into a massive patio. I could see such a hangout being a big draw for the quarantine-weary during this anything but ordinary summer, especially for the hordes of the great unmasked that were out in force last Friday on Clarence Street.