The Brooklyn Chef

When you think of The Brooklyn Chef, think of having an Italian sister or cousin who is an excellent traditional cook, cooking for you personally. This is Italian-American home cooking- made to please the family- not an easy thing to do!!

The sauces, the seasonings, textures and the flavors are the real deal...! They're heads and shoulders above most "Italian" style local restaurants, and are truly authentic. For me, raised in New York, the nostalgia I experience eating The Brooklyn Chef's food is huge- they really nail it!

Maybe we have all gotten too used to the "chain", corporate "restaurants", with their policy-dictated mandatory canned greetings, and canned gravies, where marketing consultants have figured everything out.

Brooklyn Chef, on the other hand, is like a popular local restaurant that was lifted straight out of an Italian neighborhood in Flatbush or Canarsie in Brooklyn.

Slick?...no! Real?...Absolutely! If you want to know what an Italian sauce SHOULD taste like, you need to taste the food at Brooklyn Chef- it at least will give you a standard against which to measure your own dining-out and home-cooking experience.

On Saturday, November 23, 2013 I had lunch at Winchester's newest restaurant, The Brooklyn Chef, at 819 South Braddock Street. A small parking lot provides off-street parking for four cars.

I had been monitoring this location after a sign had appeared here earlier this month, with no information about its opening date for business. Today, a neon sign proclaimed that it was open and this was my first opportunity to check it out.

The Brooklyn Chef opens at 11:00 AM six days a week, and is closed on Sunday. Closing times are 9:30 PM Monday-Thursday, and 10:00 PM on Friday and Saturday. The phone number is 540-323-7077, with fax service at 540-323-7129. It advertises delivery service, and New York style food.

It's a small place on the corner of South Braddock and Handley Boulevard, across from the Handley High School Campus, and had most recently housed The Wok Zone. Its new operators appeared to be a family group, and one of the staff told me that it had been open about a week.

The entry is from Braddock, on the left side of the building, and opens into a small dining area with three square tables, each seating four people. The entry space also has a unisex rest room and a flat-screen TV.

A slightly larger dining area is in a room to the left of the first room, and has four of the same type of square tables. The back wall of this room has a counter without seating in front of the kitchen. There's also a refrigerated display case with bottled and canned drinks.

The total indoor seating capacity is 28, and there are no sidewalk tables; there isn't any room for them because of the parking lot.

The menu is printed on both sides of a glossy 8.5x11-inch sheet of yellow paper. Its main categories are Appetizers, Soups, Salads, Cold Subs, Hot Subs, Kids Menu, Burgers, Pasta Dishes, Specialties, Desserts, and Drinks (no wine or beer).

I noted that the burger menu included a Lamb Burger, something I haven't seen in other eateries. That's not important to me; I never eat lamb.

My selection was a Brooklyn Pastrami Sandwich; listed with the Cold Subs, it was "Pastrami, piled high on Rye bread with brown mustard". I skipped the optional fries, etc., because I don't eat much for lunch.

The sandwich was good; the pastrami was indeed piled high, and the spicy mustard was used lightly and was not overwhelming. My server told me that the pastrami came from Brooklyn.

The restaurant's space is crowded, but light and airy because the entry area has two large plate glass windows; one faces Braddock Street and the other faces Handley Boulevard. The other dining area's window faces Braddock Street.

No other patrons came in during my stay of about an hour. One situation that gave me pause about the venue was the presence of three small children around one of the tables in the entry area. I'm not certain that the Virginia Department of Health would approve.

One child was a baby about four to six months old in a holder, propped up on the table. He was being soothed by a teen-age girl trying to keep him from crying, with occasional help from a smaller girl. The server, who may have been the manager, told me that the baby was her grandson Riley.

Riley didn't like being in the holder, and was happy when he was picked up and carried around. Babies usually relate to me, but not this one; when I tried to speak to him he turned his head away and became agitated.

I'm going to keep The Brooklyn Chef in mind for another visit in several months to see how it is doing, but I'm curious as to whether it will last that long. If they earn a review in the Food Section of The Winchester Star, it might give them a boost. However, I don't believe that restaurants should be used for family baby-sitting.

An ice cream parlor called the Dairy Cream Corner was the occupant of this space before it became The Wok Zone, but I never got around to trying it out. Before that, it was an audio-visual outfit, and once, upon a long time ago, it was a candle store back when candle-making was an active fad.

On Saturday, November 23, 2013 I had lunch at Winchester's newest restaurant, The Brooklyn Chef, at 819 South Braddock Street. A small parking lot provides off-street parking for four cars. I had been monitoring this location after a sign had appeared here earlier this month, with no information about its opening date for business. Today, a neon sign proclaimed that it was open and this was my first opportunity to check it out.

The Brooklyn Chef opens at 11:00 AM six days a week, and is closed on Sunday. Closing times are 9:30 PM Monday-Thursday, and 10:00 PM on Friday and Saturday. The phone number is 540-323-7077, with fax service at 540-323-7129. It advertises delivery service, and New York style food.

It's a small place on the corner of South Braddock and Handley Boulevard, across from the Handley High School Campus, and had most recently housed The Wok Zone. Its new operators appeared to be a family group, and one of the staff told me that it had been open about a week. The entry is from Braddock, on the left side of the building, and opens into a small dining area with three square tables, each seating four people.

The entry space also has a unisex rest room and a flat-screen TV. A slightly larger dining area is in a room to the left of the first room, and has four of the same type of square tables. The back wall of this room has a counter without seating in front of the kitchen. There's also a refrigerated display case with bottled and canned drinks. The total indoor seating capacity is 28, and there are no sidewalk tables; there isn't any room for them because of the parking lot.

The menu is printed on both sides of a glossy 8.5x11-inch sheet of yellow paper. Its main categories are Appetizers, Soups, Salads, Cold Subs, Hot Subs, Kids Menu, Burgers, Pasta Dishes, Specialties, Desserts, and Drinks (no wine or beer). I noted that the burger menu included a Lamb Burger, something I haven't seen in other eateries. That's not important to me; I never eat lamb.

My selection was a Brooklyn Pastrami Sandwich; listed with the Cold Subs, it was "Pastrami, piled high on Rye bread with brown mustard". I skipped the optional fries, etc., because I don't eat much for lunch. The sandwich was good; the pastrami was indeed piled high, and the spicy mustard was used lightly and was not overwhelming. My server told me that the pastrami came from Brooklyn.

The restaurant's space is crowded, but light and airy because the entry area has two large plate glass windows; one faces Braddock Street and the other faces Handley Boulevard. The other dining area's window faces Braddock Street. No other patrons came in during my stay of about an hour. One situation that gave me pause about the venue was the presence of three small children around one of the tables in the entry area. I'm not certain that the Virginia Department of Health would approve.

One child was a baby about four to six months old in a holder, propped up on the table. He was being soothed by a teen-age girl trying to keep him from crying, with occasional help from a smaller girl. The server, who may have been the manager, told me that the baby was her grandson Riley. He didn't like being in the holder, and was happy when he was picked up and carried around. Babies usually relate to me, but not Riley; when I tried to speak to him he turned his head away and became agitated.

I'm going to keep The Brooklyn Chef in mind for another visit in several months to see how it is doing, but I'm curious as to whether it will last that long. If they earn a review in the Food Section of The Winchester Star, it might give them a boost. However, I don't believe that restaurants should be used for family baby-sitting.

An ice cream parlor called the Dairy Cream Corner was the occupant of this space before it became The Wok Zone, but I never got around to trying it out. Before that, it was an audio-visual outfit, and once, upon a long time ago, it was a candle store back when candle-making was an active fad.