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photo: Bartomeu Amengual for The New York Times

American
18 Wyckoff Ave, Brooklyn, NY11237
in Bushwick
PHONE: (718) 386-3864
CARDS: Cash Only
AVERAGE ENTREE: $12
DIRECTIONS: G Train to Montrose
MAP: Click Here
HOURS: Tuesday through Sunday, 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. Closed Monday.

FROM NY TIMES: THERE will come a time when the list of restaurant fads that haven't swept through New York will be shorter than those that have. One to strike from the first list: Alpine chic.

Lodge, in Williamsburg, opened in the dead of the summer with no air-conditioning and a décor native to colder climes: porcelain antler sconces and chandeliers, tree-trunk bar tables and shaggy fake-fur carpeting. Aspen, in the Flatiron district, aims for its namesake city's sleazy-but-expensive snow bunny and white powder party vibe with bison burgers and Lucite taxidermy.

Northeast Kingdom, a modest and charming restaurant so far east on the L line that not even the most duplicitous real estate agent could sell it as East Williamsburg, is another one, a small place with a short menu of homey cooking in a one-story building surrounded by blocks of factories and warehouses.

The dining room is done up in salvaged woods: ceiling, floor, wainscoting. Vintage wallpaper decorates a corner, and found stained-glass windows with mismatched colored panes separate the kitchen from the dining room. Two tiny deer heads flank a large mirror hung on the wall near the communal table in the middle of the room. A far-ranging but coherent mix of music - from Can to Flaming Lips to Iron & Wine, with plenty of old-timey folk music for good measure - plays loudly over the restaurant's stereo system.

Paris Smeroldo, a law-firm librarian turned cook and restaurateur, opened Northeast Kingdom with his wife, Meg Lipke. They both hail from Vermont; they borrowed the name of the sparsely populated region on the state's Canadian border for their restaurant in a sparsely populated border region of Brooklyn.

Their menu has changed a number of times already in the month since they opened. A rotating selection of toasts ($4.50; two to an order), bruschetta by another name, makes up the bulk of the appetizer options. Toasts topped with sautéed kale and pecorino delivered on their simple promise one night; a pair piled high with eggplant and goat's milk Gouda did the same on a follow-up visit.

Menu staples include a hearty, simple dish of lamb stewed in red wine ($12), a homey chicken potpie ($12) and a B.L.T. dressed up with balsamic-spiked mayonnaise ($9 with a side salad). All are worthy.

The nightly specials, like grilled bratwurst with tender braised red cabbage or a rosemary-scented chicken leg over mashed potatoes, proved consistently rewarding.

Other than a lackluster apple dessert on my first visit, desserts (all $4) were all winners, excellent with a glass of port ($6) or the end of a bottle from the restaurant's gently priced list (all bottles $21 to $34). The best dessert was a slice of banana cream pie: crunchy crust, custardy banana filling exploding with banana flavor, freshly whipped cream on top. It's the slice of pie you hope will come out of that rotating display at a diner but never does.

Northeast Kingdom is an inviting, warm beacon on an otherwise spartan and industrial stretch of Wyckoff Avenue in Bushwick. Its owners made the right choice going for a cabin-in-the-woods feel, not a party-on-the-slopes one: you don't feel as if you're being hit over the head with an antler to drive the point home.

Northeast Kingdom

18 Wyckoff Avenue (Troutman Street), Bushwick, Brooklyn; (718) 386-3864.

BEST DISHES Macaroni and cheese; spinach salad with roasted eggplant, pine nuts and Parmesan; banana cream pie; most nightly specials.

PRICE RANGE Starters and salads, $3 to $8.50; sandwiches, $8 to $9; entrees, $10 to $12; desserts, $4.

Posted by freewilliamsburg on March 6, 2005 06:28 PM | Permalink