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As a rule, I'm not writing up any of the many places I've eaten in around my new neighborhood. Nobody would care but @backyardchef. But this place is an interesting example of how you can stumble into a lot of press without any PR. Last month The New Yorker ran a piece about a guy who's determined to eat in a restaurant representing every country in the world within the borders of New York City. He's down to his last several countries. So he was delighted to discover that a place had opened up in Bushwick (really it's East Williamsburg) serving the food of Réunion. The writer tagged along. (Every article about this place has assumed the reader wouldn't know where Réunion -- an island south of Mauritius -- is, but anyone who reads the Aubrey/Maturin novels knows. I'm pretty sure I knew even before that.) So this New Yorker piece talked about the restaurant, Maloya, only because that's where the guy who was the article's subject happened to be going that week. But it made Maloya sound interesting. Suddenly the food press took it up. Tammie Teclemariam wrote it up. Nikita Richardson included it in one of her inane compendia. Just a few days ago Sietsema did it. All, I'm assuming, because of that mention in the New Yorker piece. Maloya is very good. You might expect a Mom-and-Pop hole-in-the-wall, but this is very much a Bushwick/Williamsburg restaurant. The Pop came to the U.S. from Réunion to be a tech guy, but eventually decided he'd have more fun running a bar and restaurant. The Mom was and is an opera singer. Réunion was uninhabited until the Portuguese claimed it, with the French then taking it from the Portuguese. So there's no indigenous population or native cuisine; the population are people the Portguese and then the French brought over as slaves or indentured laborers. So it's sort of split between people from India and people from Africa, and the food shows that -- with a French overlay. Maloya has a good beverage program. The cocktail list reflects Réunionese tropicality and French influences (the French started a Rhum industry there, I'm guessing as a follow-up to Haiti); some stuff seems too tropical (certainly for Winter) (which I suppose ends today), but there are definitely things that are good to drink. Of course the wine list trends Natural. So the food, as I said, is a mixture of Indian and African with French inflections. It certainly isn't stuff you've had before. I enjoyed what I had very much -- and it's just a nice place to be in. ("Maloya" is the popular music form of Réunion, benefiting from an African influence -- and of course that's what dominates the playlist.) I'm happy I went. And all because I read that New Yorker piece.