THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED Char No. 4 Awards

THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED Char No. 4 Restaurant Review:

There are few things that feel as right together as bourbon and pork---it’s a magical, chocolate-meets-peanut-butter combination for adult taste buds. It’s celebrated (to some excess) at Char No. 4. Named for a way barrels are charred to age whiskey, this Brooklyn gastropub boasts a selection of over 300 different varieties of the brown tipple, all sold by the ounce. The look is more modern than such an emphasis would suggest: there’s a wall of whiskies behind the bar, a garden in back, and marble tabletops throughout. The food is, as one would guess, as smoky as some of the bourbons. Appetizers lean on the Southern finger food genre and include dishes like cheese curds with spicy pimento sauce. There’s barbecue as well, like a slightly sweet chopped pork sandwich and a smoked half-chicken, made with enough honey to satisfy Yogi. Bacon is a genre to itself here, appearing time and time again: bacon with black-eyed peas, oysters with bacon rémoulade, and in Char’s now-famous BLT, which is more of a pork belly sandwich than a traditional BLT. It’s hard to get as excited about the pork-free dishes; the salads and the pancakes at brunch feel rather wan and uninteresting. Still, if you want to have one of Brooklyn’s manlier meals, Char. No. 4 is a brawny choice.