Brooklyn Girl Restaurant Review (Mission Hills): BROOKLYN IS NOT IN THE HOUSE!

Tried the much-hyped brand-new Brooklyn Girl tonight. Wanted to like it!  Sadly, Brooklyn is not in the house....

(Or as CH summed up his meal, with apologies to the late Adam Yauch and the Beasties:
GO.....
BACK....
TO BROOKLYN!!!)

Ok, end of musical introduction, onto the scene and food

SCENE: Holy crap, how is this enormous place so full and loud at 6 pm on a Sat.?  My doc. said he went last week at 7:30 pm and it was crazy - how early are the crowds getting here?  (and this in a place that only posted its menu online today!!). 

Place is trying to be Cucina Urbana trying to be Searsucker (someone said Urban Solace too but I see that less, since this is bright and airy, at least at 6, and Urban Solace is darker and more urban).  Loud social dining, see and be scene, shared plates.  Except - sorry, this Brooklyn wannabe ain't going to cut it!

(Now let me be real for a moment: this place is full of people - the table next to me were return customers.  So our not liking the meal and my announcing it here is not going to break the place.  But if you're thinking of going and are on the fence, let me fill you in on our experience).

STARTER: They bring parmesan popcorn in lieu of bread.  Pro:  it's salty, buttery and reasonably tasty. Con: on the real side, it's stale and half-popped. I was hungry: I kept eating it anyway (esp. the more I drank).

SERVICE: It was fine - server got our courses in time to go to the Globe. But really, it was not super warm. How could it be? This enormous operation must be a pressure-cooker to work. You have a gazillion tables, it's super-loud, the kitchen is behind.  We got our food more quickly than other tables, since we said we needed to go to the theater.  Hostesses are friendly and without attitude.

FOOD/DRINK PROS:
--delectable cornbread with honey (side dish, $6)
--delectable oven roasted caulifower (side dish, $6-ish); it looks like this http://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/MF1ZY1IVIHsdU-eWfhHjCQ?select=nm_1E9aUy1L5akRzvOgsuQ#toiUOobfu5hwtlIcAo-6bQ (picture via a Yelper)
--CH's brick cooked chicken looked decent; the woman next to us was ordering it for the second time in a week
--wines are $7, 8 or 9 a glass; wines by bottle look decently priced (Cucina Urbana style), and they also have wines by the carafe, which is a nice touch

FOOD/DRINK CONS:
--on top of the stale popcorn, CH's humus came with stale pita chips (the plaintain chips were pretty decent; I liked the humus, but it had an unusual taste and CH did not like it at all)

--my pizza was a BIG...HOT....MESS.  Seriously - if they served this in Brooklyn and called it pizza, they'd get beat up.  Totally undercooked dough, big gooey mess of cheese. Really, I don't expect every high-class joint to make pizza as beautifully as Sicilian Thing - I'm not expecting real NY perfection even in a place called Brooklyn Girl - but this pizza was just plain embarrassing. And it's one of the things people were hyping on Yelp as one of the better dishes! And no - I didn't just have bad luck - the pizza they brought out to my neighbors was the same hot mess of cheese goo, with the same white undercooked Pillsbury-dough-boy crust (it should be charred and crispy and have some bubbles if they're advertising wood oven pizza!).

--bar looks seriously understaffed for an operation this size.  There were complaints on Yelp about length of time for drinks. Asked waiter if I should get cocktail or wine if we were on a schedule....quick as can be he said I should get the wine.  The $8 Chehalem Inox chard was ok; ditto the $9 Propietary Blend red (can't remember the vineyard and they don't have the wine list posted).  I'm happy I didn't pay $12-14 for these glasses, but they weren't fab wines for the price.

Don't think we need to return.  (It's so damn hard to get into Cucina Urbana - one month ahead I could not reserve for anytime after 5:15 or before 9 pm for tonight!). But I'm glad to have tried it, so I don't feel like I'm missing out, and the atmosphere was kind of fun (a poor man's out-in-the-neighborhoods Searsucker).

Oh, and my review is not idiosyncratic.  Almost cancelled the reservation after my doc. told me not to believe the hype (said it was much too loud and the service terribly slow even though the food was decent). And MuseumGirl, who lives in the 'hood, really really really wanted to like it, but reported that the food they got was not very good:  she said the barley risotto was gross, and ditto the veggie bolognese dish (which disappeared from the menu between its being posted this morning and our hitting the restaurant tonight).  She's still willing to try it for brunch (esp. since the cornbread is in fact yummy).