The New York Times
March 8, 2006

An Unpretentious New Neighbor in Park Slope
By PETER MEEHAN

THE South Slope restaurant scene has long been short on variety. Until recently, fried fish at Bar Minnow or fried veal at Cafe Steinhof were the best and almost the only options for diners prowling Seventh Avenue in this part of Brooklyn.

No more. Over the last year, restaurants have been opening on the strip at a dizzying clip: Sette does Italian, Tost serves panini and wine, the modishly decorated restaurant Beet dishes out Thai, and Anthony's slings Neapolitan-style pizzas.

Last month, Little Dishes opened on Seventh Avenue. The restaurant is a joint venture of a husband-and-wife team, Colin Wright on the stoves and Mira Friedlaender in the dining room. The room itself is simply appointed in light wood and exposed brick; when spring eventually arrives, the restaurant will add tables in a backyard garden.

Little Dishes serves a roster of Mediterranean-leaning American cuisine prepared with little fuss and few showy flourishes. Grilled whole fish (market priced) is just that: a whole fish, dourade the night I had it, assuredly grilled and seasoned with nothing more than salt, pepper, thyme and lemon. Much of the food at Little Dishes is characterized by such directness, such clarity of purpose. The marinated sardine toasts are a good example of the kind of simple alliances Mr. Wright makes work: grilled bread, faintly sweet grain mustard and sardines that are closer in taste and appearance to the Spanish marinated anchovies called boquerones than to anything that's ever come out of a King Oscar can. Oysters, served with mignonette and cocktail sauces, are just about the definition of simplicity. And although they're budget busters, good ones can be hard to pass by: Little Dishes had oysters from both coasts that were reliably briny, bracingly cold and fresh, for $2 to $2.50 a pop.

The restaurant's name may prompt suspicions that it's running the small-plates shell game that seduces diners into ordering a litany of overpriced and undersized dishes. But fear not. Portions tend more toward ample than adequate. You can happily make an appetizer-entree-and-dessert meal work, or, if so inclined, order a few dishes, augment them with a couple of side dishes, and make a convivial, communal dinner out of it. The service at Little Dishes was consistently excellent; the servers informed and flexible: they will pace your dinner perfectly.

One of a few "big dishes" large enough for two is a massive, meaty lamb shank ($18), braised to unctuous tenderness and a burnished glow, scattered with rosemary and served over pan-fried spaetzle studded through with black olives. Stewed pork butt over navy beans ($9) is a "little dish" that wasn't little at all; it is a heaping helping of meat in sweet, sour and spicy sauce. The falling-apart-tender meat and loose, unreduced sauce conjured warm Crock-Pot memories for one friend.

There are few explicitly vegetarian offerings on the menu, save for a couple of salads — one of roasted mushrooms and shaved Piave cheese ($11) and one of roasted winter vegetables ($7), both of which needed extra salt at the table — and side dishes. But the side dishes are neither consolation prizes nor menu filler. The black olive spaetzle, which makes a supporting appearance with the braised lamb shank, can also shine on its own ($7). Fresh, firm cranberry beans, heartily seasoned with thyme and garlic, are as good as legumes get. You can get them under the duck confit ($14) or get them on their own ($6), but get them.

The desserts ($6) falter, but only slightly. All are served with freshly whipped crème fraîche or cream, which can make up for many flaws.

We were only few bites past the oysters one night when a friend announced, "I would be so psyched to have a place like this in my neighborhood." She hit the nail on the head: with its straightforward menu and accommodating vibe, Little Dishes is the sort of restaurant any neighborhood would be happy to call its own.

Little Dishes

434 Seventh Avenue (15th Street), Park Slope, Brooklyn; (718) 369-3144.

BEST DISHES Marinated sardines; duck confit; braised lamb shank; whole grilled fish; black olive spaetzle; cranberry beans. (link with picture)

The New York Sun
April 26, 2006

Small Packages
By PAUL ADAMS

The concept of Little Dishes is present more in its name than on its menu. The name, in fact, sounds a singular wrong note, inflicting a too-firm dictum on this humble, eager-to-please restaurant.

In fact, the new Park Slope destination, like most restaurants, offers both little and big dishes, and serves them in courses, in that order. Chef Colin Wright cooks a tremendously appealing brand of American food with no preciosity or pretension. The dishes, big and small, are eminently sharable, but more for the joy of it than due to any tapas-style enforcement. No plate has more than a few ingredients, and none of them are even faintly exotic, but they're exactingly chosen and combined, to excellent effect.

A mussel starter ($10) exemplifies the kitchen's perfectionism. It's the same pot of yawning bivalves, with creamy sauce, that you can find all over the city, but these are marvellously plump and open wide, each shell contains a well-apportioned pool of sauce, and there's not a single speck of grit. Even the receptacle for empties is the perfect size. With equal care, two small salt-cod fritters ($10) achieve a primal balance of crusty and creamy, with a tart caper aioli for lubrication and a cool celery-root slaw for contrast.

A few starters are more sharable than others. A radish platter ($8) arrays four colorful types of heirloom radishes on a white plate and leaves them to stand on their merits, which they do, with just a dab of oregano butter and salt for support. Some restaurants' dolled-up sardines could take a lesson from the big, silvery ones served on crostini here ($8). They don't try to be anything they're not: They're served simply with vinegared onions that offset the somewhat oily fishes' rich flavor.

Occasional giggles sound around the cozy dining room from immature diners ordering pork butt ($9), which features in an almost entree-size "little dish." Gentle roasting gives it a barbecue-like tenderness, with a chewy, sweetly browned surface. A bed of smoky, firm white beans adds just enough contrast to the bowl of meat.

What the menu calls Big Dishes, and what most people would call main courses, are even plainer: half a roast chicken ($16), a grilled steak ($17). A whole fish of the day - mine was striped bass ($21) - is grilled and served on the bone, with lemon and herbs stuffed inside, and its skin liberally oiled. Skate ($16) arrives lovingly curled on the plate around a heap of little green lentils, which almost outshine it for flavor. They have that creamy bite that lentils sometimes achieve, and they're larded with hunks of smoky bacon. The skate, meanwhile, has a crispfried, salty crust and beautifully tender ribs.

A slow-cooked lamb shank ($20) has unbeatable falling-off-the-bone panache, similar to the pork butt's but darker in tone. Olive-flavored spaetzle, one of the menu's more outlandish touches, provides scintillating accompaniment. The spaetzle can be ordered as a $7 side as well. Confited in olive oil, a rabbit leg ($17) is almost too mild-flavored, though it's strewn with fragrant lavender that calls to mind the fields through which it may have recently hopped.

Return visits pay off, as the repertoire changes slowly with the seasons. One night, pan-roasted oyster mushrooms ($9) are a recited special; the next, they're fully instated on the printed menu. Casual but engaged service and a slightly cramped wood-finished dining room contribute to a comfortable illusion that you're eating at the home of warm Brooklyn friends.

The simple aesthetic leaves desserts (all $6) feeling a little stripped-down. A short lemon cookie caps a delicious warm stew of fruit that's fresh enough to satisfy with simplicity. But a plain slice of chocolate bundt cake leaves one pining, just a little, for a taste of something ornate.

The brief, affordable wine list tops out at $68 for a bottle of Les Terrasses Priorat, a dense grenache blend. Almost all the rest are less than $40, and many have a purity of flavor that complements the cleanness of the food. Perrin's reserve Cotes de Rhone ($7/$26) has a meaty fullness, and a tingly, bone-dry muscadet ($8/$30) commends itself to the rotating roster of fresh oysters, tasting as keenly of the Loire as, say, the frilly Imperial Eagles ($2.50 each) do of cold Vancouver brine.

If the dishes that give the restaurant its name do turn out to be little, it's only in their scope. Each one is marvelously focused and specialized, never overreaching what it's best at and never boring with excess. A genuine small-plates format might sell more wine, but it could imperil the homey, unstilted atmosphere that makes Little Dishes more than the sum of its dishes.
(link — subscriber-only)

Time Out New York
Issue 557: June 1–7, 2006

It sounds like another Johnny-come-lately in the tapas game, but not all of the dishes here are little. You'll also find "big dishes"—one of the best is a rabbit leg confit (pictured) served with lavender sauce, a side of creamy mashed potatoes and a few soft, juicy cloves of garlic. Run by husband-and-wife team Colin Wright (in the kitchen) and Mira Friedlaender (in the dining room), the place has simple decor—unadorned yellow walls, butcher-block tabletops—and a reasonable American menu with entrées priced at around $16. Best of all, there's no up-sell: Waiters recite daily specials with prices; bottled and tap water are proffered. For dessert, skip the dry chocolate cake and try the plate of tangy blue, silky goat and sharp cow's milk cheeses, served with fig spread and baguette—little details that make a difference. (link with picture)

New York Magazine
February 20, 2006 Issue

It's surprising, in this golden age of grazing, that it took someone this long to come up with a restaurant name like Little Dishes. The name and the place are the brainchild of Mira Friedlaender and her chef-husband, Colin Wright. When the South Slope couple envisaged their small-plates restaurant, they took Turkey's meze-centric fish houses as their conceptual guide. But don't go looking for hummus and cacik: Wright's menu is pure American eclectic, as you might expect from anyone who did time at the original Shopsin's. The idea, cramped table space permitting, is to tuck into several "little dishes" like salt-cod fritters, slow-roasted pork butt and beans, even a wedge of blue-cheese-dappled iceberg, before working up to a toothsome braised lamb shank or a whole grilled fish of the day. (link with picture)

Gayot

Quickly becoming the "new Fifth Avenue," the south section of Park Slope's Seventh Avenue is beginning to be roused from its sleep, as sleek and chic new eateries pop up, mimicking the dining phenomenon that has occurred in the neighborhood two blocks away. The latest eatery to hit is Little Dishes, a sleek spot that serves—as the name suggests—small plates. Little Dishes, 434 Seventh Ave., Park Slope, Brooklyn, 718-369-3144. (link)