“Oh, my God. Don’t tell me you just arrived three weeks ago and you’re exploring now. I have to tell you where to go,” Victoria Granof tells me less than five minutes into our first conversation over the phone.
We’re talking about restaurants I must visit in Gowanus — the neighborhood I currently reside in after moving from Washington, D.C. to New York City —and the nearby Red Hook, Granof’s neighborhood. There’s Claro, an Oaxacan restaurant that makes everything by hand, including the masa, cheese, chorizo and moles. There’s Hoek, a pizza joint in Granof’s neck of the woods that serves up Roman-style, wood-fired pies alongside a view of the Statue of Liberty. And there’s ACQ BREAD CO. (short for anti-conquest bread Co.), a small-yet-outspoken bakery that operates out of a townhouse in Carroll Gardens.
