Baked in Brooklyn...That's a Lotta Bread!

I'm a man of simple means. It doesn't take a bucket of caviar or a wall-mounted spigot of Cristal by my bedside to put a smile on my face. Shit, If I ever went to prison, I'd be cool with a bread & water diet as long as that bread was fresh & flavorful and the water was cold from a woodland spring. One Dixie cup of primo olive oil & extra ice cubes please (though I would regret the fact that I'm WAY too boy-faced for the slammer).

So yeah...good bread's a simple pleasure. I mean, as it is, bread is a part of the foundation of the USDA food pyramid. If you don't get 6-11 SERVINGS of the stuff every day, Obama's secret police will bust down your door & repeatedly stab your eldest son about the face & groin. True story.

So yeah...fuck Robert Atkins & his fantastical anti-carb agenda. Don't deny the bread. It's key to human existence. Embrace it like I did on Tuesday night, when I was invited to the opening event for Baked in Brooklyn, the recently-opened storefront on 5th & 26th for Greenwood Heights' Aladdin Bakery.

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Behold, the Latest Creation of Team Talde: Pork Slope

The exterior is cheekily plastered with paper pig snouts.

If there's one thing that we can all take away from the 1989 film Road House, starring an impressively-coiffed, tightly-jeaned Patrick Swayze, it's that many of life’s problems can be solved by kicking. Punching is also acceptable. In short, its message is timeless.

As such, when David Massoni, John Bush & Dale Talde, the trio behind Talde, announced in late February that they'd be transforming the old Aunt Suzie's space into a Road House-style joint, we here at FIPS were quite intrigued.

Would they be decorating the walls of the bar with chicken wire?

Would they have to fight off evil henchmen on a regular basis?

Would they be hiring a bouncer who, when pushed too far, would rip your throat out?

Yesterday, we stopped by the space to get a look at the bar's progress, learn what Road House had to do with it and, since they love us, become the first to find out what the heck they were going to call the place.

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FIPS Preview: Hungry Ghost

As a college student visiting friends in Portsmouth, NH in the late nineties, on more than one occasion we'd end an evening of debauchery with a trip to The Friendly Toast, a crunchy hippie diner with locales in Portsmouth & Cambridge, MA. The waitresses smelled like patchouli, the atmosphere was laminated collage kitsch & the food was badass breakfast.

...so when I got an email about a new place opening in the Park Slope area called "Hungry Ghost," I started having word-association flashbacks to The Friendly Toast. As it turned out, my flashbacks were right on target.

Hungry Ghost is a new coffee shop opening in the next few weeks on the east side of Flatbush & 6th, in the same triangle of food & drink that includes Flatbush Farm, purbird & Cubana Café. It's the latest venture from Murat Uyaroglu, the owner of Prospect Perk, the tiny coffee shop just a few blocks down at Flatbush & Sterling.

As it is, the Park Slope area has its fair share of coffee shops...& for good reason. Coffee wakes our asses up. Coffee shops dispense said uppers AND provide a hangout for breeders & freelancers alike. It's NOT "socially acceptable" to chill at a bar at 9am. You need to balance out the alcohol with coffee if you want to be an effective lush, people. Coffee shops are KEY.

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FiPS Preview: The Burger Bistro

The burger is king, right? In Park Slope it often seems so.

As things currently stand, the hood boasts a number of places devoted solely to hamburgers--Bareburger, Cheeburger Cheeburger, Corner Burger, 67 Burger & Five Guys--and a handful of places like Dram Shop, Sea Witch, Sheep Station & Press 195 that have tasty burgers on the menu. Can Park Slope handle another burger option?

According to the folks behind Burger Bistro, who are opening their second Brooklyn location in Park Slope on the 12th, the answer is a definitive "yes." When I met with John Agnello (co-owner, along with Vincent Dardanello) last week, he was confident that they had nothing to worry about. If anything, "the competition should really be worried about [them]."

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Who Gives a Shit: Are you excited for Beauty Bar?

(Sam Horine / Gothamist)Our friends over at Gothamist recently swung by and snapped some pics of Park Slope's very first Beauty Bar, which is housed in what used to be one half of Ozzie's on 5th Avenue. According to the blog, "The space has a pretty fair Happy Hour ($2 off all drinks and a $10 drink and manicure combo between 4-8 p.m.) to go alongside pretty reasonable prices for the area (beers run $5-7, cocktails are around $10).

You can check out all of the photos of the new joint HERE.

Anyone excited for BB's arrival?