Saturday, July 17, 2010

You'll need to find somewhere else to stand in line: Prune is closed for brunch this weekend!




Anyway, never been...given the lines out here weekend mornings, must be good or...?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Prune makes tasty food. It's a bit erratic and a bit expensive and, yup, crowded but if I won the lottery, I'd consider eating at Prune every other day. IMO, it's about as good as neighborhood restaurants get. It's not aiming to compete with, oh, Bouley, but it is a restaurant run by foodies. As gentrification goes, locally staffed and sourced and neighborhood focused places like Prune (and Counter) are okay by me. I'd rather go to Prune than any McNally place. Prune's worth a couple visits--the food and the service have their ups and downs but that's part of the charm.

Anonymous said...

Oh really? And exactly what does the neighborhood get back from Prune except crowded sidewalks full of yuppies (daytime) and "Ladies who Lunch" (with their husbands in tow) for dinner (with an occasional celeb dropping by. At $75 a pop (can't get a dinner there for less) Prune falls into the category of 'restaurant in a neighborhood'. So please don't call it a 'neighborhood restaurant'. That might have been the original concept- but they threw that out the window years ago. Do they give anything back to the community? Hasn't happened in years!

Signed- a neighbor.

Anonymous said...

Let me sum up anon 2's argument: Prune is expensive and popular, therefore it is not part of the neighborhood and must be scorned.

kurt said...

@Anon 2:34 PM.

"what does the neighborhood get back from Prune"

Presumably taxes that pay for the schools, garbage pick up, police, fire department and all the other necessities to make a neighborhood function. So yes, they do give back to the community.

Prune is a neighborhood restaurant. Maybe more than you'd like to pay but it's reasonable. You can walk away for quite a bit less than $75 a pop especially if you don't drink and significantly less if you go during lunch.

Anonymous said...

Hmmm, well, I implied Prune is out of my price range, and it is, but I dunno about $75 a head for dinner. I guess that's possible but a glance at the menu shows it's a little more expensive than it was a few years ago but, say, half an appetizer, an entree, a glass of wine, and half a dessert looks like, oh, $40 to $50 plus tip. That ain't cheap but it's in line with most similar places and minus the wine or the dessert isn't too far from a similar meal at, say, Vesulka, maybe $10 more but that's about it. It's unclear to me how a tiny place can charge a lot less than Prune and stay in business. No, it's not a great neighborhood asset but it's a significantly better neighbor, IMO, than your average Ave. A bar. And, at a glance, it looks like Prune still donates a steady stream of dinners and so on to various neighborhood schools and non-profits. Prune, Counter, Northern Spy, and so on are places I don't go, unless someone else is paying, but I think they are interesting enough and local enough to be assets to the 'hood.