Sunday, August 9, 2009

The General Greene Review



The General Greene is a cozy little restaurant on Dekalb which is another that keeps getting recommended to me over and over. Replacing the unremarkable June a couple of years back, The General Greene offers up pretty standard cafe fare with a full bar as well.

We stopped in for what I'd hoped would be lunch after finding that Autour Du Monde was only serving their brunch menu. This turned out to be true at Ici as well, and instead of running around any more we decided to just stop at The General Greene and see what we could get.



First, drinks, of course. I love a good bloody Mary, and The General Greene didn't disappoint. It could maybe have been a bit spicier, but it was very tasty and I'd order it again.



On to our entrees which were less than great. I had the burger, which was recommended to me in the Best Burger in Brooklyn post from a little while back. I ordered it medium, wanting it juicy but not quite trusting them to not make it too rare. That turned out to be a mistake, as I ended up with a burger that while good, was cooked well past medium into overdone territory. The burger itself is pretty sparse, adorned only with cheddar, red onion, may, and a slice or two of pickle. Even though it was overcooked, it was still tasty, but it wasn't very big and comes only with some nondescript greens on the side. If you get it, make sure to add an extra something on the side as well. My problem was that the only sides offered at 2pm on a Saturday were very breakfast-centric and not very appealing to accompany a burger.



While the burger was passable, we also ordered the Grilled Steak Skillet, which is steak and potatoes in a small cast iron skillet with three baked eggs on top. This really wasn't very good at all. The eggs were way over-baked and came out almost hard-boiled. The steak was overcooked to the point where it was tough, and the potatoes were basically mashed and really made no sense at all. It was almost a garbage plate, and the smell of baked eggs combined with the potatoes wasn't all that pleasant. My father was starving and still could only manage to eat about half of it. I wouldn't recommend it at all.



Aside from the bloody Mary, the brightest spot of our lunch was the bitter chocolate mint ice cream I had right as we were leaving. It's egg-less Philly-style ice cream and is very good. With Bitter Sweet just down the road, I'm not sure you'd go out of your way to come to The General Greene for ice cream, but it's something.

With so many great options for brunch in Clinton Hill and Fort Greene, it's really tough to recommend The General Greene. I wish we'd gone to Maggie Brown, Chez Lola, Olea, or Autour Du Monde, which is ironic since we'd started our quest at the latter to begin with. I'll give The General Greene's dinner menu a try some time, but I don't think I'll ever be back for brunch.

Information:

The General Greene
229 Dekalb Ave
Brooklyn, NY
718.222.1510

http://www.thegeneralgreene.com/

Google Map

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The General Greene can be good but it is wildly inconsistent. The ice cream is definitely good though.

Cassandra said...

The dinner menu is very different from their day menu, and has much more to offer. I haven't been there for lunch in a while, but I too found their side dish options to be very sparse.

BTW, I just discovered your blog and I really enjoy it!