La Lunetta, Cobble Hill

For Brooklyn Restaurant Week J and I started with Lunetta, an Italian joint on Smith Street that’s been on my list for a while. The interior’s cozy and that vaguely modernly rustic chic we’ve all come to expect these days.  That and children chanting.  Loudly.   Here’s the deal: I’ll naively pretend I can enjoy an adult evening free of screeching spawn, and you naively pretend that there is something left of your adult life to salvage.  We ordered a potato croquette, a white been bruschetta (literally a slice), fried chicken, a pasta with lamb, lemon cake, and a chocolate budino (basically a dollop of gelato in an espresso).  The croquettes faired well in the crunchy/gooey dichotomy but were a little lacking in the flavor department.  Basically just potatoey. I could taste the paprika but not the aioli, which is a shame

because why ingest so much fat with no taste payoff?  The bruschetta was nice, albeit small.  It had some smoky properties, which we liked.  The fried chicken was such an oddball; it was Chinese by way of Italy.  I hated it at first, and it seemed like the drumstick had no flavor.  Gradually, I grew to like it, but only when a bit of fried skin was included in every bite.  The raisins were just odd.  I mean, is this what they would normally have on the menu?  Since when is restaurant week a time when you do weird things not normally found on your menu?  Wasn’t that the point of restaurant week?