The General Greene First and 2nd and 3rd and 4th tastes...

Whoops, I started this post months and months ago and never finished it. The General Greene opened in Fort Greene to much fanfare in the cursed corner spot on Dekalb and Clermont. This finally might be the restaurant to not only stick around but also offer up some decent grub. DMR and I had a first taste dinner on a late summer evening. At this point the General Greene was only using the front space. There's also a very long hallway that runs past the kitchen and opens into a second dining room. I had read a lot about the rushed nature of the service and felt it throughout the evening. Also, this is a small plates place and I can never figure out how much to order at such establishments. On the first visit at least, it's difficult to gauge because portion sizes are different things to every restaurant. We over-ordered and our table didn't have enough room for all the plates.

The three bean salad - very basic, but very fresh and delicious.

The roasted beets in a yogurt chive sauce. Super good and a very nice portion.

Nasty nasty "crispy chicken" that was anything but. The meat was stringy and chewy and the skin rubbery.

The pork meatballs were a disappointment as well. They were on the dry side and overwhelmed by a too sweet tomato based sauce that was reminiscent of the sort of vodka sauce you'd get at a pizzeria. We also tried the candied bacon (yum, but nothing I'd need to order again) as well as the cheeseburger. The cheeseburger here is an interesting beast. The kitchen uses a crazy meat to fat ratio so even if your burger is overcooked, as it was in our case, it remains somewhat moist. It will also drip non stop with grease. No fries on the side, instead you get a handful of store-bought potato chips.

Ok, now fast forward to present day. The General Greene starts serving brunch and we head out one weekend morning to give it a shot and guess what, it's delicious! We've subsequently been back a number of times (I think we went three Sundays in a row) and have been very pleased overall. Dan really likes the steak and potato skillet eggs, where all the ingredients are heated up and served in a cast iron pan. The potatoes form a deliciously, crisp crust and the skillet lends itself to nice crispy bits at the bottom which I like to scrape off. Dan does not have the patience. He's also had the surprisingly not overly sweet sticky bun french toast with fruit and some sort of sweet cream, which was also declared a winner. The portion is not big enough to stand alone as a meal so he sticks with the skillet eggs.

I had the frittata once in an attempt to diversify, but it's the egg and gruyere sandwich that makes me happiest. It's got a whole grain mustard aioli and I get bacon added for a buck. On the side are some very lightly dressed greens and overall the dish makes a really delicious and economically prudent ($6, including the added bacon) meal. We always supplement with a baked good, twice the moist, exploding with banana goodness banana bread, which is served warm. Once when the kitchen was out, we opted for an apple turnover which was ok, but no banana bread. We're also fans of the fruit salad and yogurt parfait. It's been a trio of blueberries, apples and bananas the couple times we've ordered it. I'm just happy to see a side of fruit that doesn't contain melon. The coffee can be a little hit or miss, but when it hits, it's out of the park.