Sometimes it seems like Williamsburg is almost a liveable place.

I'm not going to lie, I spent all of Sunday in Williamsburg.  

(collective gasp)

Now, now, settle down-- it was not as bad as you think. First of all, as we all know, I am an extremely tolerant and open minded person.

Second of all, I think my many, many readers know by now that I am willing to put all cultural prejudices aside for a good meal (and in some cases, just a decent drink).

Third, it happened to be the first innaugural Taste of Williamsburg and Greenpoint, and there were going to be some very impressive restaurants there that I did not want to miss.

So your favorite food blogger made her way up the Great Hipster Silk Route to mingle with the native Williamsburghers and taste their indigenous foods. It helped that it was a gorgeous day, I was in a neighborly mood, and most of the hipsters had left for a fire sale on moustaches in Bushwick. Anyway, I digress-- the food was.. interesting. A few very notable contenders, a few near misses, and overall very small tasting portions at about $6 a pop!

Now, one of the main reasons I wanted to go was to taste food from Fatty 'Cue, the new and much-hyped Zak Pelaccio barbeque joint. Sam Sifton reviewed it last week, and even from his glowy, ditzy, un-Bruni perspective, it sounded pretty awesome.

So imagine my disappointment when we got there and they had already gone throught 3 whole goats and were out of food! How you can serve 3 whole goats in bite sized portions in under 2 hours is beyond me. To rub salt in my barbeque wounds, pictures of the roasted goats were all over the internets. This is what I missed:

 Stupid goat.

Here are some of the bites I actually did get to try:

 Braised beef cheeks over cream of wheat from Traif. This dish would have been perfect if I were, say, a feudal Lord in 14th century Bavaria, and had just returned from a 3 day pheasant hunt, famished and cold. But since it was, you know, 80 degrees in contemporary Williamsburg, Brooklyn...eh, I wasn't quite feeling it.

 Wild Boar biscuit with caramelized ramps, and a chicken salad-stuffed cherry tomato with applewood smoked bacon. I was very, very excited to see a wild boar biscuit on the menu-- a wild boar biscuit! How does one get a wild boar inside a tiny biscuit?! I was intrigued. Turns out, there was no wild boar in this impostor of a biscuit, but rather, on top. I give this item an 8 out of 10 for ambition, but only a 6 out of 10 for execution. The thing was so hard to eat without falling apart, and well, the wild boar was equally inappropriate for the setting as the beef cheeks. Plus, ramps? Yawn. I thought Williamsburg was on the cutting edge of trends, and ramps are about as overplayed as last summer's white ray-bans.

The bahn mi vendor was one of my favorites. Not only did they NOT RUN OUT OF FOOD, and were giving out HUMAN-SIZED PORTIONS, but the sandwiches were delightful! Everytime I have a vietnamese sandwich, I think "why do I not eat this every day?!" They are so delicious and packed with flavor, but light enough that they leave you ambulatory.
 

The darling of the festival, Van Leeuwen is a micro dairy in Greenpoint that makes unbelievable artisanal ice creams. I am lucky enough to have a Van Leeuwen truck parked right outside my office building (which is why I go out for "coffee" so often), and yet I waited in an absurdly long line to get what amounted to 2 spoonfuls of ice cream for 6 dollars. But that oak barrel-aged vanilla bean ice cream was totally, whole-heartedly, enthusiastically worth it.

Later, we vistited the fascinating  Mast Brothers Chocolate Factory, whose beautifully wrapped bars I may or may not buy at least once a week. The factory could have been straight out of the industrial revolution with all the beards, copper equiptment, and nautical knick knacks... if they sold bars of fleur de sel chocolate for $5 in the 1800s. Anyway, it was visually and olfactorily impressive:

What is ZZ Top doing with those cacao beans?

It seems vintage

And yet it appeals to my modern aestheic.

Finally, I stumbled across the brand new, first on the east coast, Blue Bottle Coffee Co. I had seen this at the Ferry Building in San Francisco, but the line to get a cup of joe was about 45 minutes long, probably because they slow drip each cup through this crazy coffee bong contraption. Not all that "efficient", but I hear it tastes really good.

After all of this walking and tasting and observing, I was pretty pooped out. Lorenzo gave me that look that says, "I need prosecco, stat!", so we finished the day with a glass of bubbly outdoors at Aurora. Not a bad day, in all. The natives were peaceable, and we exchanged gifts of maize and nautical star tattoos. In our honor, they performed this sacred PBR dance as we left: