Feature

Cafe Lafayette
99 South Portland Avenue, Brooklyn
718-624-1605

À Table
171 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn
718-935-9121

Two years ago there was nothing, at least not until French photographer and waiter Charles Sorel opened Chez Oskar on Dekalb Avenue. With a jazzed, light-filled interior, delicious, strictly French cooking, and music that shifts without warning from mambo to show tunes to hip-hop, Chez Oskar became the only place to eat in Fort Greene. Manhattan transplants mingled with locals like Rosie Perez, for whom Sorel threw a surprise brunch the morning after her wedding. Now she and her friends congregate at Sorel's new place, Café Lafayette, just a few blocks away, whose bare-bones décor and diverse Francophone dishes like chicken gumbo and Senegalese mafe suit the neighborhood's postcolonial palate. Prices (entrées, $7 to $13.50) are also friendlier than Oskar’s ($10 to $19).

And this year, Sorel isn't alone. Local resident Jean-Baptiste Caillet and his wife, Kate, have opened their country kitchen, À Table, on Lafayette, offering Fort Greene a fresh, southern variety of French with comparable prices (entrées, $10 to $16). "The food is clean and light," says Perez, "and they offer a completely different type of menu. And if you're really, really nice to them, they may offer you something that's not on it." Especially if you're Rosie Perez.