Dear Mack’s (new restaurant on Seventh Avenue between Garfield and Carroll Streets in Park Slope):

To put it bluntly, so far I’m not hearing good things about your food.

I know you’ve only been open a couple of weeks and there’s always that rocky shakedown cruise period at any restaurant, when it first opens.

So this is just a friendly note to say: Slopers are excited about the new place and WANT to like the food, and want you to succeed. You’ve got a great location and a good idea: a casual, fun place to eat with friends and family any day of the week.

Slopers really want Mack’s to work out not just as a bar but as a place to grab a decent burger or fish, chicken, meat or veggie entree.

I was in there last Tuesday night for drinks with a friend. We sat at the bar and had a great time watching the Olympics (Ladie’s Short Program ice skating) at the bar. We didn’t eat a thing.

The bartender was super nice about turning on the volume so that we could hear the skater’s music. We drank raspberry martinis, which were fantastic and I cried my eyes out when Joannie Rochette skated, just two days after her mother died.

The bartender told us that the “executive chef” is excellent but that some of the kitchen staff had to be replaced. I am hoping that’s why some notable Slopers have not been impressed with the food. The bartender told us that the chef makes his own pasta and that his food is “very good.”

But so far I haven’t heard good things (and I hear stuff).

I admit that I haven’t eaten at your place yet. So I may be out of turn making these comments. It’s just that, I hope by the time I eat there the kinks in the kitchen have been worked out and things are on the up and up.

In other words, I hope the food is as least as good as the food at your other place, Johnny Mack’s, on 8th Avenue and 12th Street, a place we love to go to after a movie at the Pavilion.

It would be a shame not to have a much needed place to have a casual dinner and drinks on Seventh Avenue.

Good luck and best wishes:

OTBKB

Food and Drink

Is Bussaco Okay?

February 27, 2010 admin

Last I heard, Bussaco, the one-and- a-half year old restaurant on Union Street, had brought on Katy Sparks as co-owner and executive chef.

Sparks ran Quiltys and received a Best New Chef award from Food & Wine Magazine in 1998. She joined the Park Slope restaurant in January after there was a parting of ways betwen Bussaco’s original chef/co-owner Matthew Schaerfer, formerly of Le Bernardin, and co-owner Scott Carny.

Now I hear that Katy Sparks is out and a new chef is in. Turns out she wasn’t a co-owner after all.

Personally I’ve enjoyed most of my almost 10 meals at the restaurant and I especially love the bar, which has a great wine selection. Not surprisingly owner Carnery is a top sommelier.

In the snowy recessionary winter of 2010, is the restaurant going to survive? It’s a nicely designed space with a fabulous bar, good service and generally good food.

What is happening?

Serving Park Slope and Beyond