Walter Foods

Walter Foods

Neighborhood: Williamsburg - South Side
253 Grand St
between Driggs Ave & Roebling St)
Brooklyn, NY 11211
(718) 387-8783
Scaled 1 to 10, 1 being repulsive and 10 being orgasmic (of course!)
Food 4
Ambiance 4
Service 4
Overall Rating 12
Good For spending your hard earned money on mediocre drinks and food but looking cool doing it in your own 'hood with your Billyburg buddies



Review


The first thing you notice as you enter Walter Foods is the noise level.
Between the crashing din of loud clubby music playing and the people talking, you feel like you are walking into a bar rather than a casual restaurant. And in fact you are, as almost half of the indoor area of the place is devoted to the bar area and that is your first port of entry. The second thing you notice is the wood. And lots of it. The décor seems to harken back to an earlier age of old style saloon with some extra Brooklyn cool thrown in. What give its away are the deep green plush sofed back seating for cubicles and the artful wall placement of sepia and black and white drawings.
The menu ,matching the size of the establishment, is on the small side. Entrees ranged wildly in price from a 13 dollar short rib burgar to 44 dollars for their version of surf and turf, a half lobster and filet mignon. Food flavors might be described as leaning towards diner casual with some Brooklyn creativity thrown in, or what I like to call chef identity confusion. Their cocktail list is as extensive as the food menu, which might suggest this is where their true strengths lie. An interesting selection of tequilia, rum, bourbon or gin- based drinks with many classics thrown in. The wine list has a small but adequate selection of bottles, with a even smaller selection of wines by the glass. The bottles  tended towards pricey for the casual style of the place,most in the 50 or 60 dollar range, maxing out at a 100 dollar pricepoint. (I never understand the placement of a 100 dollar wine bottle in a place like this. If you are spending 100 dollar on a bottle the quality of the meal should match the expense of the wine. I love fried chicken as much as if I was true southerner, but eating it with a 100 dollar bottle of wine is either sheer stupidity or sheer pretention. ) I opted for an  11 dollar rum based apricot sidecar. Light on the alcohol, very apricot in taste, a little too sweet for my taste. As far as cocktails go, pricey for what you get in the alchohol and taste spectrum.  My husband opted for glass of an Austrian white, Gruner veltliner, which the waiter had a hard time describing. Not crisp or sweet, with a yeasty unusual aftertaste, my husband found it a good match for our first course.
We started with the oysters ,as they advertise  prominently that they have a raw bar. In fact, there was only one raw option on the menu,”oysters”, with a selection of 4 to choose from. The price was standard, 2.5 to 3.5 per oyster, no Brooklyn deals here.  We went for the Long Island Bluepoints and Beausoleil from Prince Edwards Island, which were good and fresh, although nothing spectacular. We also opted to try the lollipop wings which I had read much about. I was sorely disappointed to find them nothing but buffalo wings with less meat on them, albeit less messy to eat. In short neither unusual or an exceptionally good version of these bar standards. Served with a blue cheese sauce laced with cilantro which though tasty on its own,  I did not find  complementary to the wings. The wings were saucy but  tended towards rubbery, perhaps having been simmered in their sauce for some time.
For our second course, I opted for a glass of the Austrian pinot noir and my husband, tried the German beer, bitburger. We found both uninteresting and not particularly good.
For my  entree, I followed with the pork, which that night was not the typical menu selection with apple compote and braised escarole but served with broccoli rabe and sauted red and green peppers with garlic. When I was ordering this pork version it did cross my mind that the pairing of broccoli rabe with green peppers did not sound particurlary appetizing, but nothing else on their menu appealed. As expected, my pork came out a jumbled mess of overcooked rabe and peppers dripping with grease and too much garlic. The pork chop was a thin standard supermarket chop, not as I had expected a double rib chop. Although the pork was well seasoned and not over cooked, it,following the wings demise,  had been left simmering too long in its sauce. The result was a watery meat, somewhere between braised and boiled, fully unappetizing. My husband chose the whole roasted trout with a warm vegetable side salad. It arrived charred and dried, served on a confused array of snow peas,raddichio,endives and presumably any other leftover vegetable available in the kitchen that night. It tasted as dry as it looked and was flavored with another mix of confusing and unsavory herbs. We ended the meal with the peach cobbler, which arrived suspiciously quickly after our order.A generous portion, drowned in a thick haze of confectioner sugar, filled with barely ripe peaches and laced with an overly enthusiastic layer of firm dough. Sad to say, it was the highpoint of the meal.

We found service was adequate  and polite. 

In short, Walter Foods should merit a visit if you live in this  Williamsburg block and want a few pricey drinks in a loud bar atmosphere followed by some expensive  nibbles of mediocre food.
The Quest continues. .......