an evening out

Hard to believe that we hadn’t eaten at the neighborhood restaurant where Mark does his baking until just a few nights ago, but we finally went in for a lovely meal at Bussaco Thursday evening. Mark said that he’d been staring at the summer menu for weeks while working at the kitchen and wanted to go in for dinner. I love the room – it’s spacious and uncluttered, but not cold and there’s this great long communal bar table made from wood recycled from a tree from Prospect Park.

We had a variety of dishes that night – oysters, squid with chorizo on arugula, octopus, seared sea scallops with sugar snap peas, mac and cheese made with Gruyère and the most perfectly crispy top, and very tasty fried chicken with savory and slightly sweet/sour collard greens which Mia loved. The waiters were kind enough to make the girls frothy ice-cold chocolate milk after they saw that we got special dessert wine and wanted special drinks too. All in all, a fantastic dinner with grown up food that the kids enjoyed. We went in very early because of the girls so we had the restaurant mostly to ourselves, but heard that it got busy later on. After a nice chat with owner Scott Carney, a Master Sommelier who is a veteran of the Manhattan restaurant scene before opening this restaurant in Park Slope, and compliments to Chef Kevin Adey, we were on our way, walking off the food on a lovely Brooklyn evening.