Photo: Elisabeth Loomis
Nilma Black might be the busiest person in Park Slope. She is a Brooklyn mother of two young kids. Also, she is also a model with a hectic shoot schedule. Plus, she is a doula on call for births at all hours. All this while simultaneously involved in aid for her fellow Puerto Ricans, who just lost power again. She has been assisting groups like C.E.P.P.A. Coop and The Women Helping Mothers Center to make sure that rural communities receive diapers, formula, water filters, and midwifery services, while working towards sustainability. If that isn’t enough, she recently began a new business. Along with co-founder, Sheila Peluso Benjamin, they are empowering the parenting community of NYC with an “online village” called Babu that aims to bring personally vetted experts and support to families looking for guidance. Need a sleep trainer? Lactation consultant? Someone to come over and see if you have diastasis recti (or explain what that is?) Babu will be there for you. Calling it “a curated group of care specialists for the prenatal, birth and postnatal periods,” the site will launch this summer. It will be the free resource that families can’t live without. Nilma wears many hats and uses the restaurants in her Park Slope neighborhood as a home base, meeting place, and mobile office. We caught up with her for a peek at her local haunts.
This “BLT” is made with shiitake mushrooms. Photo: @suninbloom
Brunch
I go to Hungry Ghost (253 Flatbush Ave., Park Slope), which feels like my second living room. I do a lot of my appointments there. Sun In Bloom (460 Bergen St., Park Slope) is all organic, it’s vegetarian. It’s the most amazing, cleanest food you’re going to find in the neighborhood. I like the BLT in a wrap of collard greens. It is vegan, so [the bacon] is mushroom. It’s incredible.
The back table at Calexico is perfect for large parties and pitchers of Margaritas. Photo: @yeraha
Dinner
Dinner is funny, because when I have dinner with my family, it’s kind of around what the kids (Nesta, 8 and Juno, 5) want. They like sushi, rice and beans or mac and cheese. We do a lot of Born Thai (293 Flatbush Ave., Park Slope). I like the back table in Calexico (278 5th Avenue, Park Slope), when you go for dinner with the girls, and you have your drinks! Mexican food definitely for dinner with the girls.
A classic cocktail bar that still holds up as a neighborhood go-to. Photo: @weatherupbars
Happy Hour
There is a specialty cocktail place called Weather Up (589 Vanderbilt, Prospect Heights) that has been there forever. I love it there. It is so cozy. I get wine because I’m not drinking [cocktails] anymore, but they have amazing specialty cocktails.
That’s it! That’s my circle around my neighborhood.
