PICCOLI...What a week end!

After La Traviata at BAM by the City Opera (omg i am becoming more than just a willing husband...I was practically a fan ...this opera should teach us fathers to butt out)...and later the ericwatches became eric eats. Late Saturday night(1030pm) we found another new terrific Italian restaurant in Brooklyn discovered this weekend(see Hopeland below).
This Trattoria has some Argentine influences (Torontes wine is one clue) and is located on an emerging strip of 6av (#522) near 14st. Don't miss the arcobaleno salad with grilled corn, peppers and avocado or the torta di olio with creme anglaise and orange (zest?).
escarole with cranberies(contori) but also don't miss the scallops when they have them or the cauliflower risotto (1 of 7 risottos). Chef Rodas is very present and the others who lead and serve here will make you feel at ease in a way that should draw you here from afar...from Mendosa,Argentina or Salerno Italia or Bandon, Oregon, but if you live between 3st and 18st in bklyn between ppw and 4av, they deliver.....

escarole

scallops in chickpea puree

Risotto

arcoboleno

TORTA

BUT go there if you can because it will feel like a family dining room wall hangings and all and you wont have to clean up after or invite the neighbors because Piccoli will do all that for you.

HOPELAND for some positivity

If you name your restaurant Hopeland, you must offer an optimist affirmation and a pessimist salvation ...
and that's what Roy Marino and his charming partner Pietro Costa do here in this glowing ,leather flowing,

lemon and parmesan

clams and muscles

ROY STANDING and diner struggling over so many tempting choices

                                                                 

cauliflower and mushroom and artichoke croquettes

haven with kind genuine servers and food that is familiar and yet unique. Roy is a friend who called his last restaurant Broken English ,so you know he has a sense of humor, but here we learn about his sense of style.  Even the tin bread bowl and the herbed olive oil and the light fixtures and the charming simplicity of the pasta dishes. The croquettes were fabulous . I will go here often and not just to say hi to Roy...but to explore the menu and in the Spring to sip Fallanghina in the garden. Ask if David can serve you and say you learned about Hopeland from Ericeats because I would like Roy to know that I am not the only one that reads this blog.    

Minute Cafe where the winds blow hard and Bandon, Oregon feels like a quintescential Stephen King kinda town

Shipwrecks line this coast

Kim on the best  day 

The storms come in from the misnamed Pacific this time of year and the rock croppings both Goonie familiar and foreboding require a fireplace or some other homey warmth to calm the nerves and relax the spirit. So while good meals were had at the Bandon Dunes Golf Resort and the Wheelhouse and the Lord
Somebody and Allora and there were vast furious views and even the dungeoness crab cakes at the airport's

Patrick's 6th jump

man and dog on a hill

minute's masonic view

cups like Keene's pipes

Minute Cafe

Yankee Pier were perfect...yet...nevertheless the Minute cafe was the needful thing to give safe haven from the something wicked my way coming...Their oatmeal! Their cups on the wall! Their biscuit and cheesy omelet and my JR. Just a day before Valentines the occasion warmed hearts and Kim and Patrick had the same impact. Back in 1937 most of the town burned when fire caught the very spiky prickly oil filled Gorse plants, but the town is back...a little scary but quite wonderfully filled with Manuel and Don and Maurice and Bob and Misty and Penny and 25 other people who represented a community well...which i will tell you about after a minute or two. .. or 3.