NYCGuide

The Brooklyn Hit List: The Best New Restaurants In Brooklyn

A fine-dining spot that feels like performance art, a Taiwanese dumpling destination, and more new restaurants to check out in the city's most populous borough.
A spread of dishes at Theodora.

photo credit: Melissa Hom

Brooklyn isn’t the biggest borough in the city, but it has the most people. Consequently, there are a lot of great places to eat, and that’s exactly why the birthplace of Busta Rhymes deserves its own Hit List. Scroll down for our favorite new Brooklyn spots, and check out our NYC Hit List for all the other new places we like across the city.

THE SPOTS

photo credit: Will Hartman

Coffee

Greenpoint

$$$$Perfect For:Coffee & A Light BiteDrinks & A Light BiteGetting Work Done
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Greenpoint didn’t need more cute coffee shops, but now they have another. This bar and cafe with vintage green library lamps is a great working destination, in case you're looking for a place to type emails faster than it takes your table neighbor to tell you about the sweater they thrifted for $430. Grab a coffee and a mushroom and leek quiche or a cold-cut laden sandwich on ciabatta. And, when you’ve had enough of your laptop, stay for a glass of wine or a $16 cocktail at the bar. Red Rover closes at midnight on weekdays and 2am on weekends.

photo credit: Melissa Hom

There are people in Fort Greene who eat, sleep, and breathe Miss Ada, the Mediterranean restaurant where you can share hot-pink beet hummus with your crush. They can now add Theodora— a fish-forward restaurant from the same team—to their rotation. There’s a long, earth-toned dining room where you’ll want to drink excellent cocktails for several hours, especially if you get the one with tequila and feta cheese. If Miss Ada is perfect for a third date, this kookier (our server’s word), pricier (our word) spot is perfect for a seventh date, when you're comfortable enough with the person across from you to around drop around $200 on things like dry-aged kampachi and grilled prawns.

Bed-Stuy residents probably already know about Little Grenjai, the brick-and-mortar from the couple behind Warung Roadside. Maybe you’ve even eaten there, last fall, when the Thai American diner briefly opened without gas, and still managed to make a standout smashburger. Now Little Grenjai is back—gas and all—and you should come to this diner-like spot at lunch for the krapow smashburger, or in the evening, for thick Texas toast covered in saucy clams, drunken noodles, and a bottle of natural wine to wash it all down. 

While you were eating at the place you saw on TikTok, which (surprise, surprise) wasn’t actually that good, something way more exciting happened: Radio Kwara opened. The tiny restaurant in Clinton Hill is from the folks behind Dept. of Culture, the always booked Nigerian tasting menu spot, and it’s a more accessible restaurant. Reservations are plentiful for now, and nothing on the a la carte menu is above $32. Come with a friend, stop by the wine shop next door (Radio Kwara is BYOB), and share the butter-soaked bread ati obe with marinated mushrooms, some goat pepper soup and charred octopus suya.

photo credit: Sonal Shah

Come for the ti’ punch and wide selection of rhum agricole, and stay for the créole food at this sea green island escape in Bushwick. Maloya’s owner is from Réunion in the Indian Ocean, and though your server might be wearing flannel, the colorful travel posters and zouk playlist keep the vibes summery. Bring a date and sit at the long wooden bar, or grab a couple of cane-backed chairs at a little table with friends. This is a great place to start with a drink and some crispy samoussas, then end up with a couple of entrees, like cubes of swordfish in a tamarind broth, for a meal that tastes like Réunionese home cooking. 

photo credit: David Malosh

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The wine bar in Greenpoint serves the kind of food we eat in fantasies about dining al fresco by the ocean while draped in cashmere—like we imagine Meryl Streep does on Sunday evenings. And you'll find dreamy bites, like a phenomenal plate of gildas, featuring three skewered boquerones in a rich olive oil, and a mackerel toast made with buttery slabs of house-pickled fish. But this is also a north Brooklyn establishment, with a north Brooklyn crowd. Located in a former art gallery with trapezoidal angles and a yet-to-open upstairs loft, Cecily may be draped in cashmere but it’s also wearing a killer pair of vintage leather boots. Come here when you want to impress your date with nice things, without going to a stuffy restaurant.

If you’ve ever been to Evelina in Fort Greene and thought to yourself: “Gee, I wish this place served rotisserie chicken,” your hypothetical inner monologue is in luck. Now, there’s Rosticceria Evelina. The pasta-heavy menu from the original spot has been swapped out for one that skews way more roasted and baked, and includes a handful of excellent, doughy pizzas. But the real reason you’re coming here is for that juicy bird served on a plate of crispy yukon gold potatoes. Order that, plus at least one pie and the jamon iberico croquettes, and see what other restaurants you can will into existence.

According to our calculations, at least one wine bar opens every hour, and at least half of them serve pizza, and some type of green olive. But none of them come from the masa experts behind For All Things Good—until now. Bar Birba pours Italian natural wines in a former pizza parlor in Bed-Stuy, and the pizza slices are deeply charred, with simple toppings—try the margherita, or the bianca, with ricotta and crispy rosemary. Bring someone who also can’t resist a Brooklyn pizza-and-natural-wine spot, and dream about returning here when it’s summer again, to lounge outside for several spritz-filled hours, wearing barely any clothing and eating olives.

On one hand, it's another seasonal, contemporary American restaurant. On the other, it serves a burger topped with a tempura-fried mushroom (not unlike Shake Shack, if we're being real), and that burger is one of the juiciest in town. Boring as it might sound, Greenpoint's Gator is actually pretty interesting. We're not saying you have to call out sick and sprint to the nearest G train—especially since the liquor license has been delayed—but if you've exhausted all the spots serving little gem salad on your block, and you want to feel something, stop by for some short ribs over coconut grits. As of right now, the little dining room with marble tables and steel-framed chairs, is very quiet.

Walking into a restaurant and immediately knowing exactly what it’s useful for is like a total solar eclipse or a Frank Ocean album: extremely rare. But at Huda, a Levantine bistro in East Williamsburg, we knew right away that we'd like to move in around the corner, just to turn our average weeknights into fun evenings here. There are massive windows up front, and ’90s and mid-aughts hip hop playing inside. Work your way through a short but mighty menu with things like blistered grapes, roasted squash with cherries and pomegranate seeds, and shish barak in a creamy, smoky yogurt-chili oil sauce. There’s a full bar as well, and the refreshing house arak is served icy cold, with mint. 

We already miss Daughter in the Crown Heights/Bed-Stuy area, where a cappuccino led seamlessly to a glass of orange wine, all while you got your work done (or at least pretended to). Che, from alums of both Daughter, and The Fly, also serves coffee and food during the day, and will start serving wine and small plates at night soon. It’s smaller, and harder to pretend to work in here, but it’s a good spot for putting on a very nice outfit and eating a towering breakfast sandwich with a friend on a Saturday morning in Bed-Stuy.

There may come a time when you need a dumpling. It may be an inopportune time, like when you live in Bushwick, have spent all Saturday in bed, and cannot imagine getting on a train to go to Sanmiwago. But now you have Formosa, a Taiwanese dumpling destination on Evergreen Ave., which looks like your friend’s living room (your friend who’s really good at rehoming stooped furniture), and which sells a plate of eight pork dumplings doused in crunchy chili oil for $12. They also have popcorn chicken and lu rou fan with tender braised pork, and will be adding beer and wine. Peel yourself out of bed, don your coziest sweatsuit and head over for a satisfying, low-key hang.

It's hard to stand out among all the new businesses on Greenpoint’s restaurant row, but Taku Sando fills a nice, portable lunch-related niche. From the people behind the LIC izakaya Takumen, the small restaurant has a back patio that we’re eyeing for spring, and serves pork and chicken katsu, egg salad, and potato korokke sandwiches. They specialize in making a fluffy, slightly sweet Japanese milk bread, and if you like your sandwich with the edges cut off, you should reconsider: The chewy, dense crust is what makes these particularly good. They also serve a few different salads, and paper-thin ribbon fries, which you can get dusted with dashi furikake.

If you’re going to insist on being as aggressively pleasant as Carroll Gardens, you’d better have a charming neighborhood restaurant to complete the pretty picture. Swoony’s, an American bar and grill from the people behind Cafe Spaghetti, is clearly following the “beloved local bistro” blueprint. Its dining room feels like an extension of the area's idyllic brownstones, finished in nautical shades of blue and filled with grayscale photos, fine china, and tchotchkes. But it all works, backed up by a perfectly cooked short rib au poivre, creamed spinach covered with breadcrumbs, and other nostalgic classics.  

It’s hard to compare Ilis to other restaurants, because most other restaurants don’t feel like slightly ridiculous performance art in a candlelit Greenpoint warehouse. Here, the servers are also cooks, and the menu—which begins at five courses—focuses on ingredients from North America. Depending on what’s available, you may eat some porcinis wrapped with fresh cheese in a lotus leaf, or bigeye tuna from Montauk served over pebbles that were gathered from a beach in northern Maine. If you have around $200 to blow through, and you’d like to experience something mildly confusing and often delicious, check this place out.

A&C Super already has a line out the door. Pretty soon, that line is going to snake down the block. At this tollbooth-sized bakery in Williamsburg, you can pick up a sticky cinnamon roll, crackly croissant, or mortadella sandwich on fresh-baked sourdough. If you arrive before it sells out, you can also grab a cheddar biscuit filled with a heap of fluffy scrambled eggs. There’s no seating inside, so you’ll have to take your food to go, but there’s a little gravel patio out back where you can loiter when it’s nice out.

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