The mayor of Red Hook Ball Fields is back! I’m the mayor! I just found out about this. Pretty handy in finding out the names of each vendors and their menus, with pictures.

My quest everytime I go to the Red Hook Ball Fields is to find something new to eat. This past Saturday I found myself chowing down happily a Guatemalan enchilada. As you can see from above a Guatemalan enchilada is waaaaaaaaaay different than the enchiladas we’re used to. This was a fried tortilla, lettuce, pickled beets, ground beef, red sauce, slices of hard boiled eggs, cheese, onions and cilantro. I got this from Carrillo and wasn’t sure what to expect. It smelled kinda funky but tasted REALLY good. And being that it was served chilled its great for summer weather. Then for some weird reason I was craving for rice but I was afraid if I get a rice dish it’ll be too much food. I walked up and down up and down but finally settled at Ceron. Last time I got fried pork with yuca from them and loved it. This time I got the fried chicken with yellow rice and beans. YUM YUM to my tummie for $6. The chicken was perfectly fried and juicy but was bit under seasoned. But hell yeah I’m going to get this again.

This past weekend marked the first appearance of the Red Hook Ballfield Vendors this year. All of the vendors were out, and though the crowds weren’t too bad there was a strong hipster/foodie presence. One of the best things I had was called rellenitos, simply translated as “little stuffed things” — in this case plantains stuffed with black beans. I had them last year when I went with my Dad, but this time they offered to sprinkle some granulated sugar on top of it. It didn’t really add much, because the plantain was already slightly sweet and contrasted nicely with the slightly salty beans. Not quite as good was the mango with chili, lime and salt; mostly because the mango was not nearly ripe enough. Still, the weather was just about perfect, and it felt great to reconnect with this quintessentially Brooklyn experience.

I keep hearing about Defonte’s and their incredible tasty sandwiches. But both their locations being not near me at all has kept me from trying their sandwiches. Finally on a beautiful March Saturday I walked down with Steph and met up with Howard at Defonte’s in Red Hook. Steph suggested that I get the hot roast beef sandwich which has roast beef, mozzarella and fried eggplant. We walked in around 1:45pm into a near empty Defonte’s and by 1:50 it was packed! Weird. I actually wanted to try their cubano but their hot roast beef sandwich seems to be their signature sandwich so I got that. Steph got roast pork with hot salad and provolone and Howard got potato and egg with cheese. We all got the 1/2 size, which I later realized that it was enough sandwich to last me the whole day.

We took our sandwiches and ate it in the park just few blocks from Defonte’s. It was great! The sun was shining and a light breeze was blowing. Let me just say, the sandwich was HUGE! It was packed with roast beef and cheese and fried eggplant, how was I going to eat this damn thing?

I took one bite and loved it! I don’t really like eggplant but how do you make me eat eggplant? By frying them and sticking them into a sandwich with cheese and roast beef. I quickly finished half of the half sandwich and was contemplating about finishing the other half. Should I? Do I dare? Oh heck yeah I did and because I ate the whole thing it kept me full the whole day and skipped dinner.

I am ready to go back for the cubano now.

Donny: How hard is it to find a spot for lunch on a Saturday morning? Pretty damn hard. Our first choice was Buttermilk Channel but Scott found out, by looking at their website, that they don’t serve brunch on Saturdays only Sundays. FINE~~ Our next choice was the newly opened Bread and Butter which my friend told me has FRIED CHICKEN FOR 2!! Sadly again, no brunch for us. They don’t even do brunches yet. Thankfully Scott suggested Kevin’s in Red Hook. Kevin’s specializes in seafood so in their brunch menu there were poached eggs with smoked trout and a hearty seafood stew.

Howard: I was out waaaay too late the night before, but I had the foresight to set my alarm. At 10am it went off, and for a moment I couldn’t remember why I had wanted to wake up so “early”. Then it came back to me: Donny had suggested brunch. At 11am. In Red Hook.

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One of the reasons it’s good to be friends with Donny is that he occasionally sends out emails like the one he sent out last month, inviting people on a bakery crawl through Brooklyn. Of course we only ended up going to two bakeries, but the fun of it was walking through Brooklyn, and we did eat a lot of good food.

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Although my dad and I have some things in common, it’s hard to find something that we both like to do. While my mom and my sister were in Spain, my dad called me up and asked me if I was free for the weekend. Donny and I had planned to visit the Red Hook Ball Field vendors, so I invited my dad along. I think he had a good time, and he kindly wrote up what he thought of the experience.

Click to read what my Dad had to say…