Fashion designer and Heights resident Rachel Antonoff, interviewed for Vice and asked how she would “[d]escribe the Brooklyn Heights style” answered: “Relaxed. Extremely casual, terminally casual. A little kooky.” Despite this ambiguous description, she says that, having lived here for one year, she considers it “the friendliest place on earth” and says “the weirdest thing” is that “[e]veryone seems to know each other.” In this respect, she says, it’s like her notion of an ideal home, the fictional Stars Hollow of The Gilmore Girls.
She names some local favorites: Noodle Pudding is her top restaurant; she also likes Clark’s, Iris Cafe, LPQ, Fascati’s Pizza, and says Fortune House is the “most underrated”. For clothing she likes Ann Taylor Loft (partly because it’s next door to LPQ) and Housing Works. She has a dog, and rates Sami of Pet’s Emporium on Montague her “favorite neighborhood character”, but also gives a friendly mention to Rocco & Jezebel on the endangered Pineapple Walk.
Oddly, she says she thinks Henry’s End is a bar. In fact, it’s the one high end local restaurant I can think of that lacks a bar. If you face a long wait for a table, Mark, the owner, may invite you to sit at the Brooklyn Heights Wine Bar, several doors away, which he co-owns with the owner of Cranberry’s (to which Antonoff says she goes frequently), and summon you when your table is ready. Antonoff confesses to knowing little of the local bar scene; perhaps her boyfriend prefers it that way.
Photo: Daniel Silbert.
