Pourriez-Vous Spare A Ball?

Pit Stop

127 Columbia St. (betw. Kane and Degraw Sts.)

718-875-4664

Sandwiched between Carroll Gardens and Red Hook is that nebulous district known as the Columbia Street Waterfront. Like strippers at Scores, this waterfront is eyes-only: It's one of Brooklyn's last functioning ports.

Once mafia country, Columbia Street is now chicken-killing country, which is similar. Nearby, several poultry markets serve as fowl judge, jury and executioner. However, chicken carcasses can't curtail gentrification. Fine bars (Moonshine) and cake shops (Margaret Palca Bakes) now fill storefronts, where elderly Latino men sit in folding chairs on sidewalks. Here is where we find Pit Stop, a red herring of a bar-restaurant.

Given NYC's recent barbecue fixation, it seems logical that Pit Stop would purvey smoked hog rump. However, the shop's entrance is guarded not by pig (à la hot dog?happy dive Rudy's), but a cutout of a grease monkey, the kind changing tires at racetracks.

Pit Stop is a French Bistro. It's the brainchild of Smith Street's Bar Tabac vet Laurent Brunacci. The chef is a Formula 1 fanatic (think NASCAR with skinnier, faster cars). Consequently, the bistro's decor recalls a 12-year-old boy's bedroom. Shiny silver tin walls are adorned with black-and-white photos of F1 racing stars and boxes of model-car kits. At puberty, even I outgrew my Lamborghini poster.

The interior is cramped. Thankfully, the backyard is a claustrophobia antidote, easily four times bigger than the restaurant. There's an ample deck and a garden dotted with picnic tables covered with Lillet and Stella Artois umbrellas. Trees grow tall and verdant. Perhaps taking a cue from the car theme (or rural Ohio trailer parks), flowers sprout from tire planting pots.

On a recent brain-melting evening, I take a deck seat and ogle my reason for visiting: four pétanque courts, rectangular and sand-covered. Pétanque (pronounced "pay-tonk") is bocce's dressed-down sibling, like stickball compared to baseball. A small marker sphere is tossed onto the court (which can be irregular and improvised), then opponents alternate launching steel balls near the marker. Boozing while playing is encouraged, but what to drink?

The beers ($4) are nothing ecstatic: Newcastle, Kronenbourg, Bass and a Stella on draft. It's what a college freshman buys to feign worldliness. The wine prices, however, are favorable, with most averaging $5 or $6 per glass. I ante up for a bottle enigmatically called "Chardonnay" ($23) and a melted goat-cheese appetizer ($8.50). The wine (Remy Pannier, likely Carlos Rossi's French cousin) is crisp, though cloyingly sweet, but who am I kidding: cold and alcoholic is all I crave.

The appetizer arrives on nicely toasted country bread. The combo of tomato comfit, honey, salad greens and goat cheese gives me strength to play pétanque. I ask our waiter, a smile-prone French man with a curly mop of hair and a tank top reading "PROPERTY OF PLAYBOY" if we can play. Of course, he says, retrieving a bucket of balls. Pétanque, he tells us, is popular on the weekends. The first Sunday of every month, Pit Stop hosts a tournament. It attracts novices and experts alike, though "some French people like to prove themselves-and they often do."

I sip my wine, and my opponent and I begin throwing. Like bocce, pétanque is maddeningly easy-and maddeningly difficult. A perfect toss could hit a rock and skitter off target. With cargo cranes as backdrop, I lose, lose, lose-continuing a lifelong streak of defeat at ball-based sports. (And ball-based bar games like the nearby Floyd NY's bocce court and Bushwick Country Club's mini-golf.)

Nonetheless, exercise has roiled further hunger. Though Pit Stop's menu is slightly prohibitive ($18 tuna entrees mean markedly fewer drinks), the burger (listed under the silly "qualification" heading, while desserts are "checkered flag") is a reasonable $8, covered with cheese, leaking juices onto a brioche bun and served with crisply fried potatoes. It's elevated pub grub at plebian prices. The desserts-strawberry tarts drizzled with peach sauce and a warm chocolate cake ($4.50)-also merit sampling, perhaps, dare I say it, at drinking's expense.

Or not. Order another round. On sweltering summer days, when armpits become sweaty fire hydrants, Pit Stop's an unpretentious refuge. The crowd is convivial, as low-key as the string of lights ringing the deck. Dogs accompany diners, and feet on a chair are not frowned upon. Go on, there's carte blanche to get drunk and throw man-killing steel balls into the night sky. It's no crime, ghosts of Mafioso be damned, but a summertime requirement.