By Emma Kadar-Penner
One of the reasons we love our weird, industrial location, is the community. We are surrounded by other small businesses who are doing their Bushwick-thing and it is oh-so-inspiring. We are especially excited about all the delicious food and beverage that can be found around our humble store, and we wanted to share one of our recent finds with you.
If you are a follower of Friends, you know we love natural wine. We host a monthly shopping event called Natty Thursday, where we serve free natural wine and offer a discount. That's why we were super excited when we heard about Benelux. It opened this month, and they have a beautiful, natural wine list (beer and cocktails too).
We heard about Benelux, from one of our BFF's, Tess Drumheller. Tess is a wine connoisseur and works for distributor, MFW Wine. She helped create the wine list at Benelux, so we knew the wines would be YUMMY. We drank two delightful bottles, the first was Hedoniste, from Domaine Kumf et Meyer, in northern Alsace. The second bottle, Domaine Ledogar Roug'é Clair was a delicious light red from the Corbieres region of Languedoc-Roussilon, in southern France.
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Don't worry if you're not into drinking (ummmm, but what's wrong with you?), the food at Benelux is as good as the wine. The Benelux Union is a politico-economic union of three neighboring states in western Europe: Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. Not surprisingly, the menu is inspired by these European flavors - you'll find sausages, mussels, and hand-cut fries with a variety of mouth-watering mayo dips. As a vegetarian, I was very impressed by the veggie-friendly Waterzooi (a Belgian stew dish), made from lentils and smoked butter. And the cabbage steak with pecorino and pickled pomegranate seeds was mouth-wateringly good.
The best part about eating and drinking, is sharing the experience with friends. We laughed, we gossiped, we attempted to take drunk Boomerangs (and were only semi-successful), and we had fun. And now I can't wait for the next edition of #FRIENDSANDNEIGHBORS.
Benelux is located at 25 Bogart St. Open everyday 11am-2am. www.beneluxbk.com
