Emma's Torch, A Restaurant With A Meaningful Mission, Ready To Welcome You This Sunday At Their New Smith Street Location

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free!

Emma Lazarus

Emma's Torch, a restaurant that doubles as a classroom for recent immigrants, will be opening its doors officially this Mother's Day, Sunday May 13th in their brand new home at 345 Smith Street.
The new eatery will offer New American Cuisine, inspired by its students. (See a sample menu here.)

Besides great food, Emma's Torch offers so much more. Through its eight-week, paid apprenticeship program that includes English language classes, the non-for profit social enterprise helps refugees find meaningful jobs in the culinary industry.

The restaurant and the program were founded by Kerry Brodie, who not only graduated from the Institute of Culinary Education, but also holds a Masters in Government from Johns Hopkins University and a Bachelors in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University. The restaurant got its start as a pop-up in Red Hook and found its permanent home in Carroll Gardens when it took over the former Wilma Jean space on Smith Street at the corner of Carroll Street.

Fittingly, the name of the restaurant is a tribute to Emma Lazarus, a poet and advocate on behalf of refugees, whose famous words are inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.

To make a reservation, click here.

Please join me in welcoming this very special new business to the neighborhood.

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Sad News! Perfect Corner On Smith Street To Close After More Than Eight Years On Smith Street

I am sorry to report that Perfect Corner, the lovely framing store at 345 Smith Street will be closing its doors at the end of January.  Over the last eight and a half years, owners Joe and Marion Alameda have become very good friends and I will miss them very much.  They were the kind of business owners who not only knew their craft, but most importantly, they truly cared about their clientele and the neighborhood. 
The Alamedas did not want to close their business, but were not offered a new lease by their landlord.  
A sign in the store reads:
It is with great sadness that we are announcing the closure of our labor of love, otherwise known as Perfect Corner.  We would like to thank all our loyal customers who have walked through our doors since opening day in September 2003.  We will miss being part of this vibrant neighborhood and the wonderful art that we we were able to display that represents the best of Carroll Gardens.  And of course, to all the admirers that have appreciated our annual Holiday train displays, we apologize for not putting them up this year.

Unfortunately, we were unable to come to a reasonable negotiation with our landlord to continue our business.  Due to the time and expense necessary in putting together such a specialty store, we find ourselves not in a position to relocate elsewhere.  We look forward to the next chapter in our life.

Warmest regards,  Marion and Joe

Most likely, the space will now be leased to yet another restaurant, bar or chain store, the only businesses that can afford the ever rising retail rents on Smith Street. 
What a pity. 


Update:
Take advantage of Perfect Corner closing sale, going on right now.
***** 20% off all Oringal Oil paintings by Regina Perlin....20% off Roma Photo Frames....35% off pre matted photos....35% off pre framed art....50% off Prinz photo frame


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Artist Regina Perlin Capturing Carroll Street In Fall

It's always a pleasure running into local artist Regina Perlin on the streets of the neighborhood.  Normally, she can be found painting near the Gowanus Canal, her favorite subject, but a few days ago, I bumped into her on Carroll Street, right off Smith Street.  Regina was taking advantage of the unusually warm weather to paint outdoors, before being confined to her studio for the winter. 
If you would like to see more of her art, stop by Perfect Corner, the framing store at 345 Smith Street,  which displays and sells some of Perlin's other paintings.
Love her work. Nobody captures the beauty of the area better than she does.

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'Perfect Corner' On Smith Street Now Offering Old Carroll Gardens Photos

Smith Street



photo detail

I know you are going to love this!

Joe and Marion Alameda of Perfect Corner, the custom picture framing store at 345 Smith Street, just started selling photographs taken in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood in the 1920's and 30's. As soon as they got the photos into their store, Joe and Marion called me to show them to me. You see, they know that I love neighborhood history just as much as they do.
Amongst the images are incredible shots of Carroll Park and of Smith Street, like the one above, of the corner of Sackett Street.

Marion, an avid reader of this blog smiled when she pointed at this particular image.
"You see, things haven't changed all that much since that time," she said, pointing at the dog lifting his leg against a newsstand in the image. (She was, of course, referring to a recent post of mine about dogs in Carroll Park.)
I agreed. The more things change, the more they stay the same...at least in carroll Gardens.

Make sure to stop by Perfect Corner to browse their collection. You won't regret it.
Joe will gladly custom frame one of the wonderful photos for you.

For Home Page, click Pardon Me For Asking

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Neighborhood Artist Regina Perlin Captures Unique Beauty Of The Gowanus Canal

Artist Regina Perlin painting on the Carroll Street Bridge,
Gowanus Canal, Brooklyn

See Regina Perlin's work at Perfect Corner on Smith Street

Artist Regina Perlin and I have much in common. We both moved to Carroll Gardens about 24 years ago, have a deep attachment to our adopted neighborhood and find beauty in the ordinary. And we are both magically drawn to the Gowanus Canal and to the Carroll Street Bridge, I with my camera, Regina with her easel, canvas and paints.

I fell in love with her work long before I actually met the artist. I was enchanted by her paintings of local storefronts. The ones of Jim and Andy's Produce and of D'Amico's Foods on Court Street are particularly charming, imbued with light, sentiment and the spirit of this historic neighborhood. It was only much later that I got to see her equally beautiful series of paintings of the Gowanus Canal and of the industrial area surrounding the waterway.

A native Brooklynite, Ms. Perlin was a literature and arts major at New York University, before attending the New York Studio School and then the Art Students League. She started as an abstract painter, but did not quite know where to go with abstraction. She originally came to realism to hone her craft, intending to apply lessons learned to return to that style.
Instead, she discovered outdoor painting and thrived on the interaction of passers-by who stopped to talk to her about the neighborhood and about its history. It is that spirit and that love of place that translates into her paintings. Now, she almost paints exclusively in her neighborhood.

Sitting together at the Fall Café recently, I asked her about her Gowanus Canal series. " The Gowanus Canal is a wonderful treasure because it has everything" she told me when I asked her why she was so drawn to the waterway. "The area has a lot of light. I like the shapes and I like the bit of chaos. I love the juxtaposition between beauty and neglect. The canal is an unexpected bucolic scene in the middle of an industrial world."
She tries to downplay the decay surrounding the canal. However, she does incorporate its many shapes. For example, the form of a rusted, broken down truck becomes part of her composition.

Ms. Perlin is wary of the the changes that will inevitably come to the Gowanus area in the not too distant future. She hopes that whatever may come, the light, the openness and the human scale of the area surrounding the Gowanus Canal will be preserved.

If you happen to see Regina Perlin painting around the neighborhood, or on the Carroll Street bridge, one of her favorite spots, stop and say hello. She is a lovely lady and an extraordinary talent. This neighborhood is lucky to have her.



Regina Perlin will be exhibited at Perfect Corner, a family-owned custom picture framing shop at 345 Smith Street, corner of Carroll Street. (Stop 28 on the tour)


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