Black Iris Still the Best

While prices on menus and shelves along DeKalb Avenue keep going up, one restaurant remains affordable and delicious as ever: .

As fancy restaurants, cocktail bars, and gourmet markets clamber over each other to cater to the neighborhood’s new moneyed residents and visitors, Black Iris — which has been holding down the corner of DeKalb and Clermont avenues for over a decade — just becomes more of a welcome departure from the “foodification” of Fort Greene.

When I need a nice evening out and can’t afford more than a few cocktails at Madiba or a mere cheese plate from Greene Grape Provisions, I know I’ll find a sure thing at this Middle Eastern oasis. 

Start with one of the salads, like my wife and I did the other night. After our waiter opened the bottle of wine we brought with us — yes, it is still BYOB — we ordered the delicious spinach and chickpea salad with fried onions and the baba ganoush ($7 each).

“I would put this baba ganoush up against any in Bay Ridge,” my wife said, a bold statement indeed given that neighborhood’s celebrated Lebanese cuisine.

But I take her word for it — the creamy eggplant dip has just the right balance of sweetness and smokiness. It’s perfect to shovel up with soft, aromatic pita bread, still steaming from the oven.

Next, we split a veggie pitza ($8) and merguez platter ($10). The pitza is made with crispy pita crust (of course) and piled high with globs of fresh mozzarella, olives, and tomato. The quality of these fresh, basic ingredients makes it addictively delicious. In place of the pitza’s usual green peppers, we asked for juicy artichoke hearts.

The merguez, a spicy lamb sausage, is succulent and flavorful. It comes with a simple salad of onions, lettuce, tomatoes and olives, another fragrant pillow of fresh pita, and a choice of sides. We could have had hummus or rice, but opted for more baba ganoush — things were getting out of hand at this point.

When we finally cried uncle and stopped eating, we had spent all of $30.50 between the two of us for two hearty appetizers, a veggie pitza, and a merguez entre with sides. 

I’ll admit to occasionally being thrilled by the high-stakes adventure of testing an expensive, high-concept eatery’s ambitious promises of epicurean delights.

But even the finest five-star spot can’t reproduce the pleasure of enjoying uncompromising quality at an affordable price. Black Iris is one of the few restaurants in the area that still has both. Long may it remain so.