606 R&D

I stopped by on a cold day in February for a beer in this homey, nouveau-​chic gastropub. They have a nice menu with something for everyone. Save room for house made donuts!
Peter was juicing lemons real good.
Miranda works here.

Sit at the bar, order drinks from Miranda or Eric, be kind, and they’ll take amazing care of you.
Favorite drink was the Fancy Free, which helped soothe old man winter’s bite with a bite of its own. Very nice people, very fun evening.
Really well done.

Delicious food & great service!
This place never disappoints for dinner (haven’t tried their brunch yet).
Get the bread first, all entrees I’ve had to date were great, & definitely leave room for dessert.

My visit to 606 R&D is on record as quickest inhalation of a delicious burger ever. The Happy Valley Burger is akin to utopia in your mouth. The environment is nice and classy and clean and beautiful but also extremely cozy at the same time… their website is a nod to this aesthetic. Go here!

We love the cocktails here and recently tried the brunch– I found the experience to be pretty lack luster. We ordered the donuts (amazingggg), the egg sandwich and the sweet potato bahn mi. Everything came out at once within 10 minutes of ordering so that felt a little rushed. They also ran out of sausage which is one of four sides. Both sandwiches both come with no sides on an ungarnished plate for $ 13/​$ 14. Just a bit disappointing– they were both good (egg sandwich was much better), but It felt like we could have been just as happy with a deli sandwich. I would love to see them add some side salads and generally it would be nice to have more menu variety. Also, the waitress didn’t check in with us once to see how we were enjoying the food… Hoping they change things up soon because it is a lovely place!

Food was great, particularly the burger. The egg sandwich was also excellent. Bloody Mary was punchy and tasty. The space is airy and welcoming. However, the ventilation from the kitchen was not great and so there was a noticeable smell in the dinning area. The server had an attitude.
All things considered, a good place for brunch that I’ll make sure to visit again.

This was a really nice place. I am a steady eggs Benedict and salmon kind of girl but so when I looked down and it was no where to be found I instantly panicked. Should I stay should I go? I was tempted to run fast! Then I looked around and see how relaxed everyone seemed to be. The old (80yo) couple, who enjoyed their leisurely date. The young couple (30yo) sipping on wine. And the pockets of friends gossiping and decided it was okay.
Looking over the menu I want quite sure what to get and the helpful and super friendly staff offered their opinions. I ended up choosing the rosemary biscuits with jam and butter. With the Brussel sprouts scramble. I enjoyed both but I will be returning for the biscuits most definitely.

Nice little quaint spot in the Park Slope area. This place is extremely small but cozy. The service was warm and friendly. I went during the hours of brunch. I asked to see the main menu as well being that I was really hungry around 1:30pm but the kitchen is very small so they were only serving brunch, which is fine just a tip to keep in mind. I ended up ordering an egg sandwich with ham, carrot relish, cheddar cheese and a blend of 2 sauces that was house made. The sandwich was tasty and fresh. The sauce was pretty good as well. I also tried the biscuits which were very thick but also pretty good. Overall no complaints on the food or the service. It is a little on the pricey side as my friend and I paid $ 50 after tipping for brunch not including any drinks. They should definitely throw in some mimosas or bloody marys! But that would have been an additional 8 bucks each. Anyway Id like to come back here and try the dinner and the doughnuts!

Decidedly mixed.
Very lovely atmosphere. But waiter could only be described as humorless.
I like a smaller menu but there were too many mediocrities on this one. Highlight was the delicious fresh out=of-the-oven squash bread.
The small plates we ordered were kind of boring: ordinary squash soup I could make better at home, root vegetables that were nicely cooked and seasoned but mostly just potatoes. I order brussel sprouts a lot at restaurants because I like to see how chefs make a dull vegetable into a symphony but this version was quite pedestrian.
We thought that even the donuts which others on Unilocal were raving about could have been fresher. We had a much better version a couple of weeks earlier at a country farm where we were apple picking. The trick here is to get them onto the plate as soon as they come out of the deep fryer and these had obviously been sitting around all night.
There are so many good restaurants in Brooklyn now and we don’t get out often with three kids so we have high expectations when we do.
Not going back to this one; prefer to stick with Lulu and Po or Prospect in Fort Greene.

This is a sad review for me to write. I’ve lived in Prospect Heights for almost 3 years now, and R&D was our staple dinner place for most of that time. But about 6 months ago, things started dropping off. The food wasn’t as interesting or well prepared.
Unfortunately, things have just gotten worse and worse. The last time we ate there, none of the dishes were good. I had a merguez sausage over polenta. The sausage was fine, but there was almost no sauce, and the polenta was totally bland, no seasoning at all. My husband’s very expensive steak was not only tiny, but completely overcooked and cold.
Our waiter was pretty much disinterested in us, so we cut our losses and got out of there as soon as we could. It’s so disappointing to have one of our favorite restaurants go downhill like this.

Food was delicious as usual. We were surprised that they hadn’t updated their small menu in 3 months — it would be nice if they would change things up. Still, our visit was delightful, as was the service. The French-​press coffee is a must in the mornings, as are the donuts!

Tonight I wanted something that did not include meat. The summer salad was fresh, tangy and just right to start.
My entrée was the stuffed eightball squash. It was simply one of the most interesting dishes I have ever eaten. The black rice was perfectly cooked and married with the cheese, squash and slighty spicy tomato sauce in a manor beyond my expectations. The grilled onion was the perfect compliment.
Still thinking about dessert!

Research and Development deli. I do R&D, I like the cut of your jib, it is a humble profession.
No, it is actually a new American deli. The premise of the new American deli is to provide bewildering options and push the boundaries of classification. It is part lunch restaurant, part convenience store, part butchery, part locavore Pottery Barn? The unifying theme is that it is local and artisanal. No, theme is it is New American and doesn’t require a kitschy theme. The single serving rice pudding restaurant which is so 2007. We serve food! Simple, hand cured food. Man up and eat! I can’t wait for this trend to be over.
I only end up in Prospect Heights when I don’t want to be there. Lost in a day full of procrastination and the promise of rotisserie, I take the wrong turn from El Gran Castillo de Jagua and end up through the looking glass on Vanderbilt Ave. (I once thought it was refreshing my first time here. Touring my friend’s friend’s decent Big Bird yellow apartment with an old fashioned red radio mounted on the high ceilinged kitchen. Matching his decent, less infuriating Tyrolean hat. Breezily following behind the wiry, hairy ultimate frisbee enthusiast to the flea market, third wheelin to soup tureens of café latte at Le Gamin…)
I needed a friendly face, some half of genuine decency I recognized. Something outside of Prospect Heights’ more accessible hipster families and less intimidating hipster men, women, and dogs (not quite Golden Retriever, but greyhound without the «Italian.») And bookstores. One can’t leave without picking up an expensive excess of dry books just to feel less unarmed (Jane Jacobs, Saul Bellow, Grace Paley, and some new dude Julian Barnes instead of Djuna Barnes.)
The people behind the counter at R&D (butchers? sandwich architects? baristas? owners?) were welcoming and nice. They recommended the BLT for the in season beefsteak tomatoes and I recommended myself the salmon bialy due to not being able to stay away from smoked anything.
I needed these high price sandwiches to be small and they were. The BLT is a small amount of wide, thin sheets of high quality salty bacon on cute rectangular bread, with large cuts of high quality L and T. If you are a bacon enthusiast, you will find it to be mostly mayo and tomato. I ate half so I could try my salmon bialy.
What a lovely salmon bialy! On the small, doughy bialy were fresh salmon slices bunched with a wedge of lemon on the top. There was a fair amount of cream cheese under the salmon, but it didn’t overtake the subtle, fresh flavor. A few capers scattered on the sandwich added an occasional salty taste to the freshness. I usually hate them, but they were needed otherwise the sandwich would taste too neutral. The lemon emphasized the Norwegian flavor of the salmon.
I got out of there to still have cheeken and torture my patience at Hungry Ghost.

I finally saw the light and had brunch here after walking by the spot for months. I’m addicted:) thus place has integrity. Every ingredient is super local, artisanal, fresh, and perfectly integrated with the next. The barly and eggs is phenomenal. The special bread w caramel butter is incredible. Brooklyn coffee brewed to perfection. Their new spot next door is just as awesome and delicious.

The bread is money. Its some sort of fresh baked, slightly sweet, corn bread with jalapeño peppers (?) and soft honey butter on the side. Trust me. Get it.
The dollar oyster happy hour is a nice deal, but the oysters were… warm. Like literally warmer than room temperature. Unless oysters are cooked, or eaten right out of the ocean… I’m pretty sure they should be kept and served ice cold to avoid any sort of bacteria growth.
The happy hour deal offers $ 7 «tap» wines and $ 4 «tap» beers. The wines are pretty tasty, but the pours are smaller than average and the beers taste better.
The back garden is adorable.

Every time I see a list of the best doughnuts in NY, 606 R&D pops up. Having tried pretty much all of the other spots, I had to finally cross this one off the list, but I unfortunately was surprised to find that they were pretty weak here.
In an effort to not be weird in just ordering doughnuts, we came off even weirder by ordering just bread and salad before we got to the dessert. Since we just had a big meal a block away at Bar Chuko, we didn’t want too much more.
The Bread ($ 8) looked and sounded great, but was not. Though it was warm, the incredibly crusty and hard exterior was difficult to cut through, let alone chew through. Some parts of the interior were softer and tasted ok, but overall this big loaf is not really worth trying.
The Purple Orach Salad ($ 13) was not great either. It had a very bitter, unpleasant taste. Bring on the dessert.
Out came the doughnuts, three pretty plain looking things — one sugar, one cinnamon and one powdered ($ 4). They tasted like heated up store-​bought doughnuts. I was surprised at how mediocre they were. After the decent first bite of each, once they cooled down, they were just tough and chewy, but not in the good way.
We also ended with the Chocolate Brownie with Whipped Cream ($ 8). This was pretty standard as well, and made me realize that this place was shockingly pricey. Aside from the decently-​priced doughnuts, everything was a major rip. This brownie was not large or good enough to warrant $ 8. The same goes for the bread and the salad.
The one really awesome thing here was the backyard seating area. I don’t think that or the regular menu options are enough to entice me to return though after the lackluster food we tried, especially knowing that there’s nothing particularly good for dessert.

Live in the area. Great food, but hospitality blows wind. It’s Saturday morning, March 29^th at 9:58 am. The restaurant opens at 10:00 am. The front door is open. (Note it’s cold raining outside)
Walk in and the server, states we are not open. Please wait outside for 2 – 3 minutes.
A. Why would you have your front door open if you’re not open to serve?
B. There are different ways to serve and seat customers when you’re not ready.
For example: Good morning. Please come in. Get out of the rain. We are a little behind today, but we can seat you in a couple of minutes.
How difficult is that???
The end result. 606 R&D is poorly managed and has a lack of common sense on how to respectfully treat customers.

Came here figuring I’d have a nice meal on a relaxing night. After the amount of food I ate, I had to go for a run. So much for nice and relaxing.
Why did I eat so much? Because I had to get those donuts everyone talked about.
I’ve been meaning to try 606 for awhile. Finally got around to it and was impressed with their menu. Whenever I pass by I look at the menu and see it’s updated often.
I ended up going with the Parsnips Gnocchi with Brussels sprouts, in a beet sauce. Pretty good, unique blend with the beet sauce.
Even though I felt full, I had to try the donuts. I got one of each, powdered, plain and cinnamon. I have to say I was disappointed. No where near the best, they’re alright.
The staff was very friendly and nice. The prices I felt was a bit pricey for what they were offering. It’s more expensive than the Vanderbilt, which I feel offers more in terms of food and ambience.
In the end I might head back. They have a deal for a happy hour burger, but even that seemed expensive. So I might head back there then, but until I go back I’d say you have much better options around at a better price.

Our table for 9 PM wasn’t ready when we arrived, so we waited at the bar for about 15 minutes. We ordered a traditional negroni and the red headed stepchild. The negroni tasted different (in a good way), because the bartender used Carpano Antica sweet vermouth. Do ask for this if you’re having a negroni.
For dinner, we tried the fried oysters, duck liver sausage, pork belly, head-​on shrimp with risotto, brussel sprouts, and flan. The clear standout was the head-​on shrimp with risotto and easily the best dish I’ve eaten all month. The fried oysters were outstanding as well. The rest of the dishes were ok, but not impressive to write home about.
I would have ordered the donuts for dessert, but they were out (first world problems).
Our waitress was very friendly and attentive. I want to try their brunch and happy hour, but for dinner, I think I could find comparable places that are not as expensive.

3.5 but rounding up for a very pleasant dining experience. After reading some of the mixed reviews, I was pleasantly surprised by my brunch experience here. The cozy ambience and farmhouse décor meshed well with their whole farm to table, seasonal, fresh ingredients raison d’etre. And the service was fantastic– very friendly, attentive and prompt. Surprisingly, only a 5 minute wait for a table for two around 1pm on a Sunday.
The food was decent, but did not blow me away. I stuck to their more noteworthy items– the horseradish sandwich, doughnuts, and kombucha on tap. The horseradish sandwich was alright– it was very strong on the horseradish at certain parts of the sandwich and I was a bit disappointed by the stiffness of the bread and the small size of the sandwich. The doughnuts were excellent though– slightly crisp on the outside and moist and flavorful on the inside. I never quite understood the kombucha fad, but having it on tap is pretty neat and I had to try it. They had a spruce flavored kombucha that day that was surprising refreshing and tasty.
The backyard space btw (currently closed for the winter) seemed to epitomize backyard BK dining (cozy, probably verdant in warmer weather, wooden farmstyle tables and chairs, iron lamposts) — will definitely be coming back in the warmer months. The Sunday supper also sounds interesting and like a great deal for just twenty bucks.