A Secret Sunset Spot
Concrete Shoals has opened on the Brooklyn waterfront
The sunsets these days have been something. Blazing and beautiful – streaks of orange and red, all the colors of a peach as it ripens, getting softer, full of its own juice.
Monday night, at the Strong Buzz Oyster 101 party at The Yacht Club by Crew, we stopped our fantastic oyster lesson from Julie Qiu and Lars Viola so we could walk to the edge of the Yacht Club’s sprawling Lido Deck, and take it in, the sky blushing like it had just seen Pedro Pascal shirtless.
And this weekend I saw another that nearly brought me to tears, and it was just a few blocks from home, on the waterfront of the Marina at Pier 5 in Brooklyn Bridge Park. I was seated on a floating dock, with a cold beer, and one of my closest friends, who’d discovered this little bar, a fancy shack really, on a long pier jutting into the harbor serving wine, beer, snacks, pizzas, and sunsets.
It opened quietly, a secret shared amongst friends, a code to the marina gate passed like a whisper, ear to ear. And now I’m whispering to you. But keep it close – we don’t need it becoming overrun.
I speak of Concrete Shoals, a new venture from Fini Pizza, which opened a patio restaurant earlier this season in Brooklyn Bridge Park. Its owner, Sean Feeney, took over this little floating cottage on the marina, and built out a sweet little nautical bar, filled the dock with oversized picnic tables, stripped rattan cafe tables and chairs, and hunter green Adirondacks.
There are a few cocktails: An Aperol spritz, another made with elderflower, a white Negroni, and a mini mudslide, a riff on an espresso martini that leans more into White Russian territory; the Dude would approve. There are a few beers, and glasses of prosecco, rose, white and red, plus a dark and juicy Lambrusco under the Fini label.
To eat, there’s a tidy menu of snacks – a list that might come about if fancy carnival food married yacht club hors d’oeuvres: olives, nuts, bags of New York state potato chips, kettle cooked popcorn with seat salt & sugar, roasted peanuts, salami, cheese and crackers, and tinned fish. If you’ve got more of an appetite, the bartender will place an order for a pie, some wings, or a salad from over at Fini and they’ll shuttle it over to your table as you pass the evening, slowly.
Concrete Shoals has little concrete; it’s a dock, a harbor, and a sky that gives you everything. Enjoy.
It’s open Wednesday-Friday 5pm-11pm and Saturdays and Sundays from 2pm-11pm. Reservations are required so you can get the code to the Marina.