It's a Thursday evening well into the first semester of the school year, and Umi Nom is half-empty. Which is a shame, since nearly everything I've tasted there has been superb. The restaurant is berthed on Myrtle Avenue on the eastern edge of the Pratt campus, in a Sargasso Sea of a neighborhood between Clinton Hill and Bedford-Stuyvesant—where trash often clogs the gutters and the nearest liquor store (three blocks east near Franklin Avenue) defends its booze with Plexiglas. You have to purchase your wine via a little sliding box, which I did—a bargain bottle of Chianti for $10. Despite a moniker meaning "Drink" in Tagalog, Umi Nom is still BYOB after being open 15 months. Don't hold your breath that the liquor license will ever arrive. In the meantime, the place is struggling... More >>>