by Cathy Hannan
OTBKB Guest Writer
Da Vincenzo
256 Prospect Park West
718-369-3590
Hours: Tuesday through Friday 5-10pm
Saturday and Sunday 2-10pm
Closed Mondays
Da Vincenzo is a new Italian restaurant at Prospect Park West and
Prospect Ave. The menu seems promising: pastas, salads, a nice selection of
appetizers and entrees, and a kids’ menu. Prices range from about $6 dollars for a salad to $22 dollars for a veal dish. There’s also nightly specials that the grandfatherly waiter had scribbled on a notepad. They’ve got a decent wine list, some at just $5 a glass, 6 beers on tap, about ten in bottles. No liquor.
Formerly a bakery, it just opened last week. As Regina Bakery, this
was the place in the last scene of As Good as it Gets when Helen Hunt and
Jack Nicholson were on the street "looking for warm rolls" at 4am.
I really wanted to like this place! We need a nice Italian restaurant
over here. I think it has "Hit or Miss" syndrome like the Japanese, Thai,
Mexican and Indian places on Prospect Park West. Some dishes are good,
some are awful, like you think maybe the cook is trying to weirdly Americanize
the cuisine and failing miserably. The Thai place down the street serves
its egg rolls with Kraft barbeque sauce…
The stuffed mushrooms were a little strange, they reminded me of a
Salisbury Steak TV dinner. The delicious house special is Tubettuni Da Vincenzo:
small tube pasta with tomato sauce and eggplant, baked in a eggplant shell.
But the pesto pasta was inedible: overcooked, and flavorless. The
sirloin steak was nice– flavorful, cooked as ordered, served with simple
sides.
Overall, the portions are large and a good value. Desserts range from
fair to okay.
But they commit the ultimate restaurant ambiance sin: There’s a TV! I
could understand if there was a proper bar area, but they don’t have one.
Is it really necessary to watch sports above the bar? Are the neighborhood
guys really that reluctant to talk to their wives during dinner? They were
playing some nice cheesy Italian rock music, so I suppose I should be
grateful that they at least had the television’s sound turned down.
The crowd is a mix of young hipsters and older Windsor Terrace
couples. They have outdoor seating, when I went it was a beautiful cool night
and its very open, you can actually enjoy sitting outside. Service is
attentive. I’m sure they’ll work some of the kinks out of the menu, once they’ve
been open a while longer.
Dear Ms.Hannan,
I ate the stuffed mushrooms and I enjoyed them, they were very good…What do you stuff your mushrooms with???? I never knew Salisbury steak tasted like Italian sausage..Are you familiar with Italian music? Or are you being prejudges that you refer to it as “CHEESY”??? As far as “Windsor Terrace neighbor hood husbands” not speaking to their wives while eating dinner, there’s no fault of a TV screen… I just call that plain rude on the husbands behalf…As far as the pesto being “INEDIBLE” It would have been easier and quicker to return the dish to the kitchen by your “GRANDFATHERLY” waiter then to sit and post it on a message board..As far as the cook who are you referring to? Which restaurant all the restaurants on prospect park west or one in particular? I strongly believe that this restaurant along with many others on prospect west, will be a hit for the most part..I have lived in this neighbor hood for many years and we have never had a variety of restaurants on park slope. I strongly believe DaVincenzo’s Italian Restaurant was a wonderful edition, and welcoming upscale Italian restaurant, whom you dined in only one week after they opened. As you said, some kinks may need to be worked out, as so any new business does. This is America, so constructive criticism has always been allowed and welcomed…are you a food critic?….