Prepare your tastebuds New York, things are getting spicy in Brooklyn with the opening of Balinese restaurant Selamat Pagi. Anyone who knows anything about Bali won’t be surprised to hear that there’s an Australian involved somewhere in this venture, and in the case of this restaurant it’s Laura O’Neill, partner of Ben Van Leeuwen and his brother Peter. The trio have already risen to the top of the ice-cream cone in New York with internationally-renowned Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream, their high-end frozen heartbreak cures and sunny day treats, but with Selamat Pagi – “Good Morning” in Indonesian – they have switched extremes from sweet to savoury.
Offering a range of traditional dishes from the beach-laden island destination, the restaurant uses all the conscientiously sourced ingredients demanded by the modern New Yorker, served up in a quaint (but frightfully hip) little venue designed with a distinct flavour of the past, from the painted wooden front door, the bottle vases to the vintage record player with its stucco backdrop. Some nice bespoke maple furniture rounds off the gentle interior of this welcome new addition to the Brooklyn menu.
