The Mango Lassie

One of the things Empanada Boy and I miss most about the Chicago dining scene is the prevalence of restaurants with bring-your-own-bottle policies. Thanks to the hellish process of getting a liquor license in the Windy City, tons of restaurants there are BYOB. This is not the case in New York where we often end up spending almost half the tab on wine or other beverages. But it is one major reason to patronize the French-Caribbean restaurant Kaz An Nou, a BYOB bistro in Prospect Heights. The restaurant is owned by Sebastien Aubert and Michelle Lane, a husband and wife team. Aubert is from Guadaloupe in the West Indies and Kaz An Nou means “our house” in the Creole dialect spoken there. We visited Kaz An Nou with Cousin Ketchup and Auntie Pasti a few weeks ago.

The wait to be seated was about an hour, primarily because we showed up at 8 pm, just as everyone and their mother were sitting down to eat. We started with appetizers, including a plantain gratin made with Emmental cheese and a beet salad with mango and goat cheese. The gratin had a nice texture, but I found the plantains made the dish a little too sweet. A saltier cheese than Emmental may have helped to balance it out better. The beet salad was more successful. The beets were cut into little cubes, making for greater surface area to hold the tasty dressing.

For my entree, I ordered the confit of duck leg, which was tender and juicy beneath a mango jerk sauce. The accompanying rice was unremarkable. Ketchup ordered the smoked jerk chicken breast with goat cheese, tarragon and honey sauce. The breast was not overdone, which is a feat in itself, but the refinement of the dish left out some of the fire, heat and flavor that I experienced at the roadside stands in Jamaica. Also, the asparagus accompaniment seemed oddly out of season, considering asparagus left the farmer’s market about a month before.

EB and Auntie Pasti ordered one of the more distinctive dishes on the menu, the agoulou. This is a burger seasoned with bold West Indian spices, avocado salsa and goat cheese. A fried egg can be added for an extra dollar. I tasted EB’s burger (with the fried egg, of course) and liked the West Indian spice combination very much. We both thought it was distributed a bit too unevenly through the patty, though. The meat was also cooked to medium, despite EB’s medium-rare request. Still, it was a pretty unique burger, and the sweet potato fries that came with it were excellent.

We selected two desserts to share. One was the spicy chocolate cake with coconut creme anglaise. This was tasty, although a little less chocolaty than I might have preferred. The better dessert was the awesome tarte tatin, which the restaurant serves still upside down (as tartes tatin are typically baked). This was truly delicious: light, but deeply flavorful. It was probably one of the best apple desserts I’ve had.

Kaz An Nou was a friendly, pleasant place to which I would gladly return. The food, while not perfect, was tasty and well-priced. It was served in a warm, welcoming environment, exactly the kind of neighborhood restaurant most people would want to have.

Kaz An Nou
53 6th Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11217
718.938.3235