When Roman’s, the restaurateur Andrew Tarlow’s first Italian venture, opened in Fort Greene in 2009, not a few Brooklynites were confounded by its handwritten, daily-changing menu. After all, weren’t the borough’s Italian restaurants known for consistency in serving the same comfort-food classics, night after night? Eventually, though, with the long-awaited rise of locavorism and seasonally conscious eating on the East Coast in the early 2010s, the frustration waned, and today Roman’s is on the fast track to becoming as adored as its Marlow-birthed predecessors, Diner and Marlow & Sons. Located on DeKalb Avenue in a small, thoroughly unpretentious space (white subway-tiled walls, vintage-y wooden tables and chairs), the restaurant, under the direction of chef Dave Gould, offers a daily-rotating three-course menu of an antipasto, pasta, and main dish—food the New York Times once described as “almost monastically pure.” Recent selections include crostini with chestnuts, pear, and honey; tagliatelle alla Bolognese; and roasted porgy with citrus and fennel. The dessert menu is more stable, and features a salty house-made chocolate sorbet every night. Don’t pass this dolce up: it has a nearly decade-old cult following.
Roman’s
Image by Polina V. Yamshchikov