The Park Slope Brewing Company, tucked into a street corner solid with brownstone and brick and with heavy trees, is pleasant enough. When it opened in 1994, its several microbrewed beers were often great, but they've become only adequate, now often flavorful but thin (their first yeastmeister disappeared). The food has always been good, though, especially their large burgers, so deliciously rare that the cells are still dividing inside. The patrons are comfortably frumpy Park Slopers, including families with middle-aged parents. The interior design expectedly exposes some brick, and adds a big bar mirror and lots of dark wood, but it's all too damn clean. Even the people at the bar don't smoke. In warm weather, I prefer the picnic tables on the sidewalk, though a heavy awning keeps them in dim shade.

The $7.25 eggs Benedict's hollandaise sauce, back when the dish had cost $8.95, used to be the star of the show -- buttery, lemony, thick, hot, and well spiked with spice announcing itself with a long, slow, happy burn. But the cayenne fan in the kitchen is long gone. When the hollandaise was spicy, this eggs Benedict was among the best in Brooklyn. Now it's merely fair, with no discernable lemon. The eggs are a bit overpoached. A generous four slices of Canadian bacon are lightly grilled, and the English muffins are well toasted but strangely soft, as if they were toasted hours before and have had time to absorb mositure. The quartered small potatoes are sauteed with some generic herb and have no spice of note. A $2 side order of bacon is generous. A $2 side order of sausage is superb -- two big, juicy links seared just right and with a pleasantly oily aftertaste.

The $4.75 mimosas are huge if low-alcohol, but it's called the Park Slope Brewing Company for a reason. I've sampled the several $5 draft pints ($4 last year), but my notes are confused -- maybe they're not so thin after all. You used to be able to see the tanks downstairs, through a glass window. Since late 1997 the beer has been brewed at a Red Hook plant. The downstairs area is now hosts more tables, a pinball game, a dartboard, and a pool table, all desolate, unused, and clean.

Service is friendly but slow.