Restaurant Review: A Brooklyn Gas Station with Serious Grub

The food at Blue Hour is made with high-quality ingredients and a considerable amount of care. The star of the show is undoubtedly the Cwunch Wap Supweme, with its spiced beef and assorted taco-ish fillings—diced tomato, iceberg lettuce, shredded cheese, homemade queso, sour cream—layered above and below a crisp tostada round, then wrapped up inside an oversized soft tortilla. It’s a familiar shape, but the flavors are far more nuanced than those of its mega-chain counterpart: the tortilla tastes fresh and chewy; the seasonings have warmth and depth and a glowing, peppery heat. The hot-chicken sandwich, dubbed the Dragon Boy, reaches a more serious level of spiciness; the meat is craggy, crisp-fried, and drenched in a wicked and intensely floral triple-chile hot sauce. It’s piled on a squishy potato roll with pickles and a purple-cabbage slaw. One of the downsides of the huge, exciting picture menu is that it’s a real beast to edit when the menu changes, as it inevitably does when a young restaurant is figuring out its deal. I learned that the Loco Moco (the kingly Hawaiian combo of a seasoned burger patty, fried eggs, and mushroom gravy over white rice) got cut from the lineup before I could try it, and that a chicken-parm sandwich I’d thought was pretty solid had been replaced by a different chicken-cutlet sandwich, the Crown Jewel, which includes thin slices of fried eggplant on an Italian roll, with fresh basil, fresh mozz, and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar. It’s subtle and fresh-tasting, a delicious odd duck among dishes that otherwise relentlessly wallop you with flavor.