If you can eat and drink your way through $40 like it’s nothing (guilty!) and you like surrounding yourself with lushes of a similar persuasion (uh, people who won’t judge you for being “disgusting–” pshh) then it’s probably not a bad idea to get tickets to the 2nd annual Taste of Bushwick, an annual food fest to benefit local theater and dance venue, the Bushwick Starr. According to the #TBT photos, everyone was smiling at last year’s incarnation so, indisputably, things went well. And if you thought there were enough great restaurants participating last year to sink a ship, then whoa buddy check out the lineup this time around and try not to drool.
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braven brewery
Braven Brewery Keeps the Bushwick Beer Dream Alive
(from left: Eric Feldman Marshall Thompson, photo: Nicole Disser)
A refreshing new IPA is on tap in Brooklyn just in time for spring. You may remember that we spoke with Eric Feldman and Marshall Thompson a couple years back about their new Bushwick-based micro-brew company, just as things were getting started. Now after two years of fits and starts, planning, scrapping, and straight hustling, Braven Brewing has finally become a reality.
We caught up with the brewers Wednesday night at fancy digs– a place called Cow and Clover, which is all poured concrete, reclaimed wood, and refurbished industrial lighting– adjacent to the now long-gone 285 Kent. Despite the close proximity of the staff, noise at the softly-lit “seasonal wood-fire kitchen” barely reached above a polite, pleasant hum at all times. The pair admitted this place was quite different from anything in Thompson’s neighborhood, Bushwick– well, for now anyway.
These Guys Want to Bring Brewing Back to Bushwick
(Photo: Nikita Richardson)
These days, Bushwick is generally regarded as the land of artisan pizza and warehouse parties, but let’s not forget that it was once the beer capital of the Northeast. If Eric Feldman and Marshall Thompson get their way, they’ll open the first brewery in Bushwick since Rheingold closed its doors in 1976 and the neighborhood may relive its glory days as the site of Brewers Row.
“We want to be the first,” says Thompson, sporting a black t-shirt emblazoned with the company’s logo, the Braven. “But we definitely don’t want to be the last.”
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