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“Jack the Horse Tavern”

Occasion:	Cuisine:	Area:	Cost:	Rating:
Night Out	New American	Brooklyn	Moderate	Great

vintage stemmed martini glasses. Beside the bar, two wooden crates are filled with books for kids, with everything from Mother Goose to Peter Rabbit. It is Brooklyn after all.

But it’s Brooklyn as seen through the lens of chef/owner Tim Oltmans and his business partner Micki Schmidt. The pair envisioned creating a place with the conviviality of a London pub, but with intimacy of a French bistro, and the food of a New York restaurant. I guess they call that a gastropub nowadays, but in any case, whatever you call what they’ve created, from the welcome, to the décor, to the food, it is certainly something. I'll call it a Brooklyn darling.

Oltmans, who started his cooking career with Jean Louis Dumonet at Trois Jean and has worked with Tom Colicchio at Gramercy Tavern, Laurent Tourondel while at C.T., and Floyd Cardoz at Tabla, has created a menu that’s made for repeat offenders. You might have the roasted French-boned chicken breast with its crispy skin and light, lemony potatoes one night, or the fat burger ($15) smothered with Asiago cheese and snuggled into a ciabatta roll with pickled onions with a cone of skinny, crispy fries another. Or you might, as we did, stop in on a brisk, bright late fall day for brunch and tuck into an omelette ($11)—more like a fluffy egg crepe—folded over a creamy basil pesto with gobs of melting Asiago cheese and a side salad so fresh the greens might have been picked that morning.

The brunch menu also includes a particularly indulgent take on poached eggs—perched on fluffy house-made English muffins, with fried oysters, artichoke hearts and hollandaise ($14). Yum. The baked eggs ($11), which sound wonderful, layered with fresh goat cheese, pesto, spinach and your choice of prosciutto or bacon, don’t work as well. The yolks harden up before they get to the table. But no matter. The pancakes (silver dollars in a bucket for kids or a high stack for mom and dad) are flawless: light and airy, the perfect vehicle for butter and syrup (which is really why we eat pancakes after all).

Whatever you choose to eat here, you will enjoy it and you will want to return. The place is charming, the food is terrific and the service is, too. The food is along the lines of Five Points, Savoy, Little Owl: simple, delicious, and reasonably priced. Everything is executed perfectly: moist and flaky fish, tender and juicy meats cooked to the right temperature, and ... [more, click below]

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Posted: December 11, 2009

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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