Pleasurably Disreputable

The Baristanet staff did try to eat at Blu a few months ago. We’d heard it was open for lunch, went there, and then found that it wasn’t.

Now New York Times Jersey section food critic David Corcoran gives Blu a rare “excellent” rating in his restaurant column today.

Blu, a tiny new restaurant in a narrow storefront that used to be Mango’s Reggae Cafe, has the dim, retro-noir look of an early-60’s basement rec room. On a ferocious night in early winter, its blue three-letter sign, etched into frosted glass in the front window, was wreathed in vapor. The place looked faintly, pleasurably disreputable, as if we’d been transported from the suburbs to some shady deserted neighborhood under the Brooklyn Bridge.

Pleasurably Disreputable. We like that. Thinking about making it our new slogan. Corcoran goes on to describe Blu’s atmosphere as “disarmingly down-market: a narrow storefront with furnishings out of ‘Twin Peaks'” and recommends the sake-marinated salmon, seafood dumplings, smoked trout, sweetbreads, among other dishes.