What you missed at Taste Talks this weekend

• The Mission Chinese and Mission Cantina chef/ owner and the Milk Bar owner appeared on a panel together to show the crowd how much they like each other. Well no, not exactly, though Bowien and Tosi are clearly good friends who think fondly of each others work.

  Bowien, who also served as the curator of this year’s Taste Talks, and Tosi wanted to show attendees how even top chefs could cook something great with dollar store ingredients. Tosi’s ice box cake, made with CoolWhip, Welch’s Grape Jelly and Ritz crackers was salty and sweet, but obviously crack pie and cereal milk soft serve from Milk Bar is infinitely better. Bowien made congee with pork, spices and scallions. It was tasty, but the pork was very fatty. (Can you really buy pork at the dollar store?

  ” data-id=”19316257″ data-link=”https://amnewyork.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/10990_image.jpg” class=”wp-image-1.9316257″/>

• If there was anything to glean from the “Is Brooklyn the next Manhattan?” panel, it’s the answer to that question: no.

  The panel featured three Brooklyn-based restauranteurs: Andy Ricker of Pok Pok and Frank Falcinelli and Frank Castronovo of Frankie’s Spuntino (and Prime Meats, etc.) And then the sole Manhattan-only panelist was Gabe Stulman (Perla, Joseph Leonard, Chez Sardine).

  The Franks and Ricker both said they chose Brooklyn because it was cheaper and they could take chances there, but that just being in Brooklyn did not make a restaurant different from a restaurant in Manhattan. It’s not the borough, but the space itself and what you do with it, they said.

  But Stulman made it very clear that while Ricker opened on Columbia Street, in a far-flung corner of Brooklyn that is a 15 minute walk from the subway, he was not interested in taking a chance like that.

  “I believe very strongly the best thing I can do is put my restaurant where there’s a lot of foot traffic,” he said, later adding he hoped to one day “have the balls” to open in a transit-starved part of Brooklyn.

  So what does a Brooklyn restaurant need to survive? Maybe just really great food. And if the crowds and what the critics are saying mean anything, then great food is certainly being made at both Pok Pok and Frankie’s Spuntino.

  ” data-id=”19316321″ data-link=”https://amnewyork.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/10991_image.jpg” class=”wp-image-1.9316321″/>

If you were anywhere near North Brooklyn this weekend, you likely saw the people loitering around Wythe Avenue and North 10th Street. They were gathered for Taste Talks, the second annual food lovers festival put on by Northside Media Group.

If you were there, you know what went down. If you weren’t here’s what you missed: