Restaurant Review: Karloff
By TOBEY GRUMET SEGAL
Let's face it; most Eastern European eateries aren't the hippest joints. More known for late-night noshing (Veselka) or deli fare (Katz's), you tend not to linger after polishing off your chicken soup or pastrami. Not so at Brooklyn's new café Karloff, where the latkes have an updated edge and the coffee is brewed in a space-age contraption called a siphon bar.
Tucked between an art store and beer distributor on one of Cobble Hill's main drags, Karloff is not your grandma's restaurant, though the young waitresses do sport babushkas and lace-trimmed aprons. Vintage wooden tables, mismatched chairs and chalk boards trumpeting daily specials dot the robin's egg blue dining area. To start, potato, leek and kielbasa soup ($7) was rich and salty, more like a gravy than a broth, the last spoonfuls to be soaked up with black bread. One disappointment: I'd have preferred big chunks of Polish sausage instead of it blended into the soup. Another starter, a Russian salad called the "olivier," ($10), was a picnic dish gone wild, studded with chunks of ham, carrot, egg, sweet corn, peas, potato and tons of dill. Also shareable are the hand-made vareniki (one dozen/$6; two dozen/$10). These knuckle-sized, boiled dumplings are filled with savories (potato or meat with caramelized onions and sour cream) or sweet fruit (cherry with wild berry sour cream). Moving on to main courses, the stroganoff -- with beef ($14) or chicken ($13) -- is high octane comfort food, the side of kasha adding texture. The heavenly, house-smoked, thickly sliced pastrami sandwich was layered with grilled onions and horseradish and accompanied by house-made sauerkraut and a sour pickle. For a vegetarian option, the big stuffed pepper platter ($11) was overflowing with flavorful vegetables and rice..
Karloff also serves an all-day breakfast, including stuffed croissants ($3 to $11) and a filling wrap ($8) with eggs, spinach, tomato, cheese and pastrami. Dessert features rotating flavors of artisan ice cream, such as lavender, sunflower-sesame-pumpkin or milk chocolate halvah. A wine and beer license is coming soon.
Karloff
254 Court St., (347) 689-4279
Cobble Hill, Brooklyn
Image courtesy of the L Magazine
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