1108 Cortelyou Road
Brooklyn, NY 11218
(718) 287-3101

A friend of mine, who's I'll call Flinker Fairy, lives in Ditmas Park, a showcase to gentrification. Love or hate the word, there's no escaping that this place is definitely seeing a restaurant boom thanks to an influx of yupsters being priced out of Williamsburg. The Farm On Adderley (on Cortelyou Road) is just such an example of this boom. It would feel right at home in the West Village or NoHo, as would its customers, and is priced as such.

Some restaurants that move into neighborhoods not known for being foodie havens can sometimes be generic and staid, relying on comfort food staples that any Joe Shmoe hired off of Craigslist can whip up. It's rare to find people willing to be experimental, but I'll say this about Brooklyn. Restaurateurs there are willing to experiment. The restaurant serves new American cuisine made almost exclusively from local farms. It prides itself on environmentally sustainable entrepreneurship and humane farming. No offense to my home borough, but I don't think you'll see this in Queens any time soon (yes, I am shaming Queens to thousands of people right now in the hopes of getting them to change gears).

FF and I arrived at about 9:30 on a Saturday night and had a 20 minute wait for a table. We grabbed a seat and a beer at the bar and waited. When the table arrived, we noshed on focaccia bread and olive oil while perusing the menu. I decided to start with The Farm's Kale and Lentil Soup, a sweet bean soup with a poached egg floating in the middle of it. It was delicious on its own, but break the egg and allow the yolk to run through the liquid and you have no idea how good it was. FF started with a side dish instead of an appetizer: the Home Made Fries, served with a curried mayonnaise. These were likewise fantastic.

For dinner, I ordered the Roasted Chicken, a simple enough dish of Amish chicken in a white wine braised red cabbage. It was very good... with a "but". The chicken was perfect. My problem was the cabbage. It was exceedingly sweet and there was simply too much of it, such that it overpowered the chicken rather than compliment it. If there was but a dollop of the cabbage, rather than a soup of it, this would have been considerably improved. FF ordered the Grilled Trout, served with green beans and a helping of dried portobello mushrooms. As with the chicken, the trout could not have been made better than it was. It was simply paired oddly. FF didn't care much for the odd mushroom chips. I, on the other hand, thought that they went very well, but that it was the green beans that should have been rotated out for another vegetable. Perhaps broccolini.

For dessert, we started with a round of coffees. I chose the Doughnuts with Tres Leches. These are basically three freshly-made, warm doughnut holes with a dusting of powdered sugar and a creamy caramel-like sauce to dip them in. They were good, but I couldn't eat the last one, lest I exploded. FF ordered the Milk Chocolate Mousse with Salted Cream. I've never cared for chocolate mousses, but she went to heaven.

Two beers, one appetizer, one side, two entrees, two coffees and two desserts, plus tax and tip, totaled just about $95.