PARK SLOPE — The comfort food wave continues to crash gently over Brooklyn.
Macaroni and cheese outfit The Elbow Room is opening a takeout counter with a full-service barbecue restaurant next door on Flatbush Avenue between Dean and Bergen streets.
Representatives of the side-by-side restaurants went before Community Board 6's permits and licenses committee Monday night for preliminary liquor license approval.
The Elbow Room has a location in Newark and another at the Barclays Center, just a block away from the new Flatbush Avenue outpost. In addition to a takeout counter, the 229 Flatbush Ave. space will house a commissary kitchen where The Elbow Room will make its Barclays Center product. There will also be a "general store" that will sell charcuterie like boudin, andouille sausage, and pickles, said co-owner Chris Morgan.
Next door, at 227 Flatbush Ave., will be a Texas-style sitdown barbecue restaurant, helmed by pitmaster John Avila, who's worked at the Austin, Tex. barbecue joint Franklin. The two spaces were last occupied by a kitchen and bath fixtures store and a skateboard shop.
The Elbow Room serves a dozen styles of what CEO Joel Bolden described as "artisanal" macaroni and cheese, with various proteins mixed in with the cheesy noodles. The menu includes a "Queso Fundido" version with chorizo, Oaxaca cheese, pickled jalapeno and tortilla chips, and a "Jamaican Jerk" dish with scotch bonnet marinated chicken, grilled pineapples and toasted coconut.
"It's going to take you back to your roots as a child," Bolden said. "It will be very high energy, comfortable place."
