Here’s an offer you can’t pass up: Free food. On Sept. 18, dozens of eateries along Park Slope’s Seventh Avenue — the dowdy older brother to hot hip restaurant rows on Fifth Avenue and Smith Street — will be doling out hors d’oeuvres and other toothsome samples in the latest phase of the Park Slope Chamber of Commerce’s “Buy in Brooklyn” campaign.
Chamber of Commerce Vice President Catherine Bohne said she came up with the idea when she noticed that she was going to the same restaurants and ordering the same things even though she knew that there were more fish in the Seventh Avenue sea.
So Bohne and Barrio restaurant owner Spencer Rothschild organized a tour aimed at Slopers all too accustomed to the same steamed vegetable dumplings at Red Hot II or favorite Malbec at Slope Cellars.
“We saw it as an opportunity to introduce Park Slope to all the restaurants that are in its backyard … and to places [residents] may have walked by a hundred times, but never had the chance to come in and see what it’s about,” said Rothschild.
Plus, it’s a great chance to show off Seventh Avenue’s slowly reviving dining scene and let people try something new with little risk.
“All you have to do is walk in, try an hors d’oeurve, get a sense of the place, and hopefully people will come back,” Bohne said. “And then it’s fun for the neighborhood.”
The flier for the event, which is hanging in neighborhood restaurants, is pure Park Slope, promising a chance to try a “soupçon of quelque chose” (which, we’re told, tastes like chicken).
The event is the latest of the Chamber’s support-your-local-businesses campaign, following a program last fall where shop owners loaned shoppers umbrellas, and a late-night shopping extravaganza in mid-December.
The Seventh Avenue Restaurant Tour will be on Sept. 18 and run from Flatbush Avenue to 15th Street. Menus and a full list of participants will be posted early next week on the Park Slope Chamber of Commerce’s Web site, www.buyinbrooklyn.com.
