1314 Cortelyou Road
Brooklyn, NY 11226
(718) 940-8188

Flinker Fairy's roots recently took hold in a one-bedroom walkup in Ditmas Park, two blocks away from where she had been rootlessly living two weeks ago. And so, with the smell of fresh paint in the air, Ikea dust peppered across the floor like flour and glasses of cheap Irish whiskey in our hands, we sat on the sofa that literally had to be sawed in half to get through the door and debated dinner plans.

"You want possibly really good French? Or a Filipino place I can guarantee is good?" I thought, took a sip of my whiskey, rolled it on my tongue, and said, well you haven't steered me wrong yet babe. And this time, I brought a camera. Purple Yam, as FF promised, was fantastic. It's interior is simple, and borders just this side of boring. The exposed brick saves it. But you're not going to hop on an F train just to stair at a wall... unless that's your thing, I guess. No, we turned our attention away from the walls and the floors and focused our energies on food and its consumption therein.

FF ordered the Korean Meatballs, basically a small meatball hero with kimchi. She thought it was fantastic, and it wasn't bad. But I won't lie, it was a meatball sub, and I'll always swear allegiance to the cheapo footlong meatball sub I get at subway, coated in mozzarella and drenched in sauce. However, my appetizer, the Duck Leg Betutu with Taro Leaves, served beside some baby bok choy and under a coconut peanut sauce on top of a banana leaf, was insanely good. Give me three of these, call it dinner, and I'd be in heaven. The duck wasn't crispy-skinned, but it also wasn't fatty. The sauce was fantastic. The meat was eat-with-a-spoon tender, and the bok choy was... well it was steamed bok choy, but I love bok choi.

We shared our dinners, but FF and I ordered different dishes. FF's entree, the Goat Curry came with fried plantains and rice/scallion pancakes. The plantains, great. The curry, beyond great. Seriously the curry was amazing. My only, and I mean only, complaint about the curry was its size. They dole out a miniscule portion. The pancakes were mediocre. They were sort of tasteless, soggy and doughy. In theory you were supposed to wrap the curry and a plantain in the curry like a taco, but I didn't bother. I let FF indulge in the doughyness and I ate my half of the curry straight up. I ordered the Oxtail Kare Kare with Bagoong, an oxtail stew in a peanut broth. Oxtail is a pretty bony meat, so once you de-boned it, you were left with a stew that was heavy on the veggies, but unless you have some aversion to non-potato vegetables (in which case may I recommend the dining establishments of Cracker Barrel and Denny's) this shouldn't bother you. The meat accompanied the dish. It didn't own it. So, having de-boned my oxtail, I was left with yet another fantasticredible plate of food. I'd recommend both of these dishes here in a heartbeat.

Even though the curry was somewhat small, we were pretty stuffed. Still, the menu's Strawberry Rhubarb pie with vanilla ice cream was daring us to indulge, so we did with coffee and gusto. The pie was also amazing.