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“Black Mountain Wine House”

Occasion:	Cuisine:	Area:	Cost:	Rating:
Night Out	New American	Brooklyn	Cheap Eats	Good

en again it is a food establishment after all, and there will be eating and drinking. So about that.

The wine list- 10 whites, 10 reds, 3 sparkling, and 2 rose by the glass ($6-$14), and 16 more wines by the bottle, split between white and red- was recently revamped and pumped up by Brandon Barton, formerly of Tabla, and it features many lesser-known producers and regions, like Tavel in the Southern Rhone—red wines packed with ripe Grenache flavors. Wines you’ve never heard of from Lebanon and Greece get equal billing with those from Spain, France and Italy, while the Pinot Gris is from Austria, and the Gewurztraminer is from the Finger Lakes. If you’re in need of some help, call over the young guy in his 20s with the ponytail. That’s Tyler, who’s the general manager, and he’s always eager to talk wine and he can help guide you through the list and make sure you’re drinking something new and interesting.

The open kitchen, about the size of an airplane bathroom, turns out a good selection of smallish plates and specials priced at $10 each. While the selection is small, there’s plenty there to make a nice dinner: Swiss chard and ricotta pie, wild mushroom mac’ n cheese with truffle oil, crusty paninis (served with salad)—one with mortadella, hot peppers and Polish bacon and another with goat cheese and eggplant), a Niçoise salad of “really expensive canned tuna” with green beans feta and hard-boiled egg, black olives and capers, alongside nightly specials like duck streudel.

One night, when I was in with my friend Debbie, we started with some oysters and a couple of glasses of bubbly—a Chateau Bethanie Cremant du Jura ($9), which is always a good way to start any meal. Unfortunately, the oysters were strangely flabby and flavorless. I’ve never experienced anything like it before. No salinity at all? How odd. No matter, the Jura was crisp and chalky, pleasantly fizzy and lovely.

To follow up and make our small plates more of a meal, we added their Winter Salad, a generous serving of chopped up endive, arugula, and radicchio tossed with accoutrements that played sweet, tart, and salty chords—crisp apples, juicy clementines, and nuggets of sharp nutty Pecorino. It was a Tuesday, which is Fondue Night at Black Mountain, and since it also happened to be bitter cold and raining out, we were more than happy to dip into ... [more, click below]

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Posted: May 18, 2008

Other restaurants in Brooklyn :
+ Chickenbone Cafe-- Closed   + Pier 116-- Closed   + Chestnut   + Lunch at Peter Luger's   + 360   + Palo Santo   + The Good Fork   + Porchetta-- Closed Now   + Bocca Lupo   + Flatbush Farm   + DuMont Burger   + Dressler   + Farm on Adderley   + The Grocery   + Saul   + Black Mountain Wine House   + The General Greene   + Char No. 4   + James   + Chestnut   + No. 7   + Vinegar Hill House   + Motorino   + Buttermilk Channel   + Buttermilk Channel   + Vutera   + Watty & Meg    + Prime Meats   + Aqualis Grill   + Jack the Horse Tavern   + Roman's   + Fatty 'Cue   + Thistle Hill Tavern   + Broken English   + Trix, by Dara Pollak   + An Ode to New Orleans in Williamsburg: Maison Premiere, By Dara Pollak   + Brooklyn Wok Shop by Dara Pollak   + Arthur on Smith   + La Vara   + Gran Electrica   + Pok Pok Ny   + Ganso    + Reynard   

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