Popina — Restaurant in New York

After gifting my husband the cookbook of 'The Magic of Tinned Fish' by Popina chef, Chris McDade, I was the one who became enthralled with the book and the place. My husband has a penchant for buying tinned fish and mollusks - no matter which country he's travelling to but what he doesn't do is use them in time before their expiry date. So the 'Tinned Fish' cookbook by McDade, was one of intrigue. I therefore took it upon myself to make a few dishes from this extraordinary cookbook, and then learned that there was a restaurant I could visit which played on the themes from the cookbook. But adverse, tinned fish folks, be not afraid! Popina is not a place entirely of tinned fish - it's Italian more than any kind of fish.

Food: Five stars I had the 'new' celery and fennel salad to start, complete with anchovies (yay!), ewe's blue cheese, and walnuts (delicate mint leaves folded in). If it came in a large size salad, I would have easily devoured it. It was SUBLIME!!!

For my main, it was the Rigatoni with the guanciale, in a delicately-spiced pepperonata sauce. A generous portion of pasta I'm told by the staff, from all the pastas on the menu. So if you want lots of pasta, get this one.

For drink I started with a Nebbiolo rosé wine by the glass and then with my pasta I moved to a 'chilled' Valpolicella red. Both were excellent in quality and paired well with the dishes.

I couldn't make room for dessert sadly. There were only two choices but each would have put me over the edge.

Service: Four stars Seemed a bit of confusion with the staff sorting out the seating and walk-in diners when I arrived for my early dinner booking. Or just my impatience? As I was only a table for one, and had pre-booked, I was seated at the bar, as not to take a table from diners who were 2 +.

Atmosphere: Three stars Humid October night in Brooklyn. But the air conditioning inside the restaurant was pumping. Thankful for my jacket which I had to put around my shoulders for most of the night even after the air conditioner was turned off. Popina is located on a busy street and whilst the window looking out is generous if you're sat near it, there isn't much to look at but the fenced-in Pier 9, and many cars. But it's not noisy, indoors. Also I cannot comment on the outdoor garden space as I did not sit there, nor...

What a wonderful neighborhood gem!

I've bike ridden past this place many times on my commutes to/from work and always wondered about it. Thankfully my roommate & I decided one afternoon to go for dinner.

We started with the sourdough, a massive piece of sliced bread served with olive oil. Hint- get the butter with fennel pollen add on, it's divine. This was the perfect thing to dip into the straciatella, absolutely creamy and delicious with peas and favas. The "romaine" felt more like a traditional Caesar (not a bad thing), with a nice dressing punch to the taste buds.

Both of us had the pork chop, a wonderfully tender and juicy hunk of meat sliced nicely into bite sized portions. Thankfully they left a good amount of meat on the bone, as that's my favorite part. Sadly, my roommate doesn't eat meat on bone and tried to cut it with a fork and knife, missing out on flavor greatness.

As we were discussing where to go next, the server convinced us to look at the dessert menu, from which we ordered the cheesecake and panna Cotta. Rich, luscious Basque style cheesecake, so plain looking, yet so full of flavor and just enough sweetness, and the panna Cotta was properly creamy and refreshed ng.

So many other dishes on the menu I want to try, including the rigatoni, papardelle (we didn't get pasta this visit), arancini and bronzino; the Mon-Thurs happy hour menu has some appealing choices like pasta carbonara, pasta amatriciana, $10 negronis and spritz's, and a few other things not available on the dinner menu. You can be sure I'll be...

Popina is a tiny little Italian restaurant on the edge of Carroll Gardens nor far from the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal and Brooklyn Bridge Park. The Negroni was tempting, but I ultimately settled on ordering a peppery red wine to accompany my meal. We tried two starters - the arancini (love) and the meatballs. We also tried the cavatelli and the pappardelle because they are the two homemade pastas on the menu (the other two are imported). The waiter was attentive and took time to explain each dish.

Overall, it wasn't my favorite place ever, but it was tasty. I appreciated the unique Southern (American) flavors infused into classic Italian dishes. At the end of the meal, while we signed the check, a cockroach crawled across the wall of the restaurant directly towards my seat. I jumped up out of the way so that it wouldn't crawl on me or in my purse. We left our signed receipts on the bar and left. I didn't receive any sort of apology or acknowledgement from the staff who tried to catch/kill the roach, which was disappointing. Maybe I'll try Popina...