Houndmouth at Rob Newton's Nightingale 9 in Brooklyn

Welcome to Road to the Eater Awards, in which the Indiana band Houndmouth chronicles the good eating along the Southern leg of their "From the Hills Below the City" tour, culminating at Eater Eve and the Eater Awards. This series is presented by Canon PowerShot, makers of the PowerShot S110 and SX280 cameras that captured all the action.

Grid View

• Nightingale 9 in Brooklyn, NY.
• Kate Toupin, chef Robert Newton, Matt Myers, Shane Cody, Zak Appleby, and GM Jorge Salamea.
• The menu.
• Breakfast banh mi.
• Sliced market apple with coconut yogurt, black rice, ginger-cashews, and honey.
• Fried rice.
• Katie with some shaved collard green salad.
• Cha ca catfish.
• Adding lime to the pho.
• Breakfast Pho with egg.

Our first edible stop in New York was supposed to be in the early afternoon for lunch at a new Brooklyn restaurant. We departed Boston early that morning, expecting to hit traffic. And we did.

Thanks to mind-numbing traffic, we stood up our amazing hosts at Nightingale 9, a Vietnamese lunch spot. (Along with our Eater editor. Oops.) Luckily, we were able to reschedule for the following day.

We woke up the next morning, partially running off adrenaline from our sold out show at Mercury Lounge the night before and partially running on fumes. No meal could have been a better cure than Nightingale 9.

Robert Newton and Kerry Diamond, the owners, greeted us upon entry. We apparently weren't fully educated, as Robert schooled us on Vietnamese food quickly, pointing out that pho is traditionally a breakfast dish in Vietnam. Suddenly the notion of a Vietnamese brunch made so much more sense to us.

We started off with some delicious Vietnamese coffee. The mixture of a certain ingredient made both the hot and iced versions taste great. It was a nice addition to food.

Katie was able to find two wonderful vegetarian and garlic-free dishes, which isn't the easiest thing to do on the road. The mushroom soup and shaved collard green salad proved to be absolutely perfect finds.

The boys meals ranged from a breakfast bahn mi with bacon, to fried rice, to what ended up being the crown jewel of the day—the Handi style beef pho with poached egg.

Once we were all full, the chef surprised us with even more grub. The market apple and catfish turned out to be so good that we couldn't resist stuffing ourselves a bit more.

We'd definitely like the thank everyone at Nightingale 9 for one of the best meals we've ever had together as a band. We will definitely make a visit when we return to NYC next year for our Winter Tour 2014, March 14 at Bowery Ballroom, and March 15 at Music Hall of Williamsburg.
Check back next time when the band wraps up their New York trip at the Eater Awards.
· Houndmouth [Official Site]
· Nightingale 9 [Official Site]
· All Coverage of the Eater Awards [~E~]