Content area
Full Text
At Cucina, a top-rated Italian restaurant in Brooklyn where Saturday-night reservations fill up a week in advance, out-of-borough diners now make up 50% of the clientele.
Chef Michael Ayoub and his partner, Tony Scicchitano, have so much faith in their ability to draw a reverse bridge-and-tunnel crowd that they are opening a second establishment, a bar and steak house, in a former funeral parlor across the street.
"We consider ourselves a Manhattan-equivalent restaurant," Mr. Ayoub says. "In fact, we consider Manhattan the outer borough."
Encouraged by increased bookings, this pride of province is leading many other chefs to Brooklyn. Dozens of new restaurants are opening, many replacing failed retailers along main shopping streets.
Offering imaginative dishes and prices that are about 20% lower than those in Manhattan, the eateries are striving to draw the culinary expeditions that traditionally have stopped just over the border, at Peter Luger Steak House or the River Cafe. Even among gastronomes, Brooklyn has been notable more for the pizza at Patsy's or the deals on caviar in Brighton Beach than for the sophisticated cooking that has popped up in every major neighborhood.
"There has been a tendency to overlook Brooklyn,"...