Not Your Garden-Variety Neighborhood Bistro

Oxalis has ambition and creativity to spare.

- Adam Platt

WITH A RELENTLESS parade of formulaic big-money pachyderm establishments (hello, Hudson Yards!) increasingly crowding the little guy out of the city’s dining scene, the outer boroughs in general and Brooklyn in particular are fast becoming the last refuge in town for a certain type of creative, stylized little restaurant. These operations tend to have the kind of lofty, slightly twee names (Olmsted, Faun, Sunday in Brooklyn) that sound more like boutique stores than actual restaurants. Often there’s a carefully tended herb garden out back and a small bar serving cocktails tinged with esoteric fruit juices and house-brewed bitters. The kitchens are fashionably cramped, as on a high- performance yacht, and occupied by intense young cooks more concerned with fashioning the perfect seasonal-vegetable tasting menu, say, than another high-angle cheeseburger for the ravenous masses.