Tonight Hepcat and I had dinner on the patio of the new Mexican restaurant, Barrio, on Third Street and Seventh Avenue. We sat next to Paul Auster, who was there with two friends.
I asked the waitress, a very nice young woman from Oregon, to tell us about the people who own the restaurant. I didn’t have a pad with me and so don’t remember their names. It’s a couple and they own part of BLT Steak, quite a fancy place in the east 20’s in Manhattan. They also owns Rice; a Japanese bento box place; and three other restaurants she couldn’t recall.
She told us that the couple bought a house in Park Slope and it’s been their dream to own a neighborhood Mexican restaurant and live nearby.
Good sign.
The fact that the food was very good is also a good sign. I ordered a glass of sangria, which was very fruity. Hepcat had beer.
They served us excellent chips and very delicious homemade salsa.
I ordered the vegetable enchilada and Hepcat had pork tenderloin with peanut mole sauce. Both were delicious and Hepcat and I concluded that Barrio is NOT your typical beans, rice, and over-cheesy enchilada and tacos place.
It’s gourmet Mexican, I think. The prices aren’t cheap. But they’re not crazy either (considering the rent on Seventh).
It’s very pleasant sitting in the orange tented area with the nice chandelier and the pretty Christmas lights with a nice view of Third Street and Seventh Avenue.
I think I’m going to like Barrio.
Best of all: the restaurant is offering a 15% discount until their real opening on May 1st.
Louise,
Just to echo OTBKB reader a little bit. While I am not about to become an ex-reader, I too find the lay-out a bit too much to handle. Perhaps you could take something away from the likes of Brownstoner and Gowanus Lounge in the way they handle photos and links from other blogs. Also – drop the weather report. Its silly and just forces me to scroll down to read about what is going on. I can go to a million other websites for the weather.
If I lived down the street from a restaurant about to open, I’d think it had “better be good”, and if I had a blog, I’d write it. As a reader, I’m interested in the food and the space, and some readers might be interested in a literary celebrity who was there. So what? (I’d be upset if OTBKB took a photo, said she’d interrupted his dinner, or ran home to get a book for a celebrity to sign).
Oh, and even though I don’t see so well, I find this blog easy to negotiate–avoiding the 90% of entries I’m not interested in–and to read.
Louise: I’ve been thinking about becoming and ex-OTBKB reader for some time and when you made your recent observation that Barrio “better be good” I think my mind was made up. I’d be happy to follow this up with some comments, hopefully constructive, about why I feel your efforts have “jumped the shark” so to speak, but this post contains a perfect example: why is it important who else was seated in that restaurant? Why not give Mr. A. some privacy to enjoy dinner with his friends and/or family? If a reader wants juicy gossip, there’s gawker.com and other such sites with celebrity sightings. Neighborhood blogs really serve a useful purpose, reporting news and serving as a forum for exchange of ideas about life in the neighborhood. OTBKB is now so crowded with extraneous matters: photos, poems, weather reports, reports about events for bloggers, etc. that it is physically difficult to read. Not to mention your very narrow column width and the many cuts and posts from other web sites. After several years of reading OTBKB, I think I’m done. To me, it really doesn’t matter who was in the dining room of Barrio. To you, such matters take on grave significance.