NYCGuide
The Brooklyn Hit List: The Best New Restaurants In Brooklyn
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: Molly Fitzpatrick
Lucky for Cobble Hill residents, their stretch of Atlantic Avenue has long been a destination for great Middle Eastern food. El Cedro is the new kid on the block, just across the street from neighborhood icon Sahadi's—and it cross-pollinates taqueria classics with Lebanese flavors. The tortillas are homemade and pleasantly tender, but the tortas have our heart. Get the pollo milanese and ask yourself why you aren’t eating more sandwiches spread with harissa mayo. El Cedro is BYOB until their license comes through, with a full fridge of Mexican sodas (including Mexican Sprite). Get the rose water rice pudding if you see it—it's crusted with pistachios and heavenly.
photo credit: Will Hartman
Pan Pan Vino Vino, from the people behind Nura, is the perfect bookend to a day in Greenpoint. Head over to this corner cafe on a weekend morning for some great pastries, like a chewy bun stuffed with cream cheese and sticky guava, or a pineapple and coconut scone. Spend your day thrifting for lamps and sweaters, and when you’re done shopping, make your way back. After 5pm, this place transforms into a wine bar. Get a country ham and cheese plate and a few creative little snacks, like oyster mushrooms with cashew cream and chimichurri, and pair them with an “aromatic white,” a “lush white,” or a wine described only as “if rosé and orange had a baby.”
photo credit: Will Hartman
Greenpoint didn’t need more cute coffee shops, but Red Rover is still welcome. 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.
photo credit: Willa Moore
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.
photo credit: Radio Kwara
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: Tiffany Yannetta
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.
photo credit: Louise Palmberg
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.
photo credit: Alex Staniloff
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.
photo credit: Alex Staniloff
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.
