NYCReview
photo credit: Noah Devereaux
Marlow & Sons
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Some things will always be cool. Bruce Springsteen. White t-shirts and leather jackets. Dr. Dre. The other side of the pillow.
Marlow & Sons is another one of these things. It’s not trying hard to have some crazy or even particularly unique concept. Its coolness is the kind of thing that a lot of restaurants try to make happen, but this place just inherently has.
Marlow feels like a clubhouse - probably because that’s actually what it was when it opened. Along with Diner (owned by the same guy), Marlow & Sons was one of the first great Williamsburg restaurants, where people who lived in the neighborhood came to hang out. These spots are located right next to each other, serve the same kind of seasonal food, and are always packed with equal numbers of locals and European tourists staying in nearby Airbnbs. The key difference between them? Marlow & Son’s Feel Good Factor comes from nothing other than the Feel Good Factor itself. While Diner is set in a tiny dining car where the servers sit down in your booth to dramatically scrawl out the menu on your tablecloth butcher paper, Marlow & Sons is relatively simple: it’s just a laid-back place to have a reliably excellent meal.
photo credit: The front room is a bakery counter, mini-market, and good spot for daytime eating.
Marlow & Sons is consistent, but never boring. Despite being around for over a decade, they keep things feeling fresh here with a menu that changes daily. Open starting at 8am, you can come in the morning and eat a fresh-baked biscuit breakfast sandwich or eggs with whatever vegetables are in peak season. At dinner, there are only two constants - oysters and chicken roasted under a brick. Otherwise, what you’ll eat depends on what they feel like making. Add to that the genuinely nice staff, and you get a restaurant experience that feels like you’re being cooked for by friends. Friends with good taste in music, who know a lot about wine, and how to make things like chicken liver pate and beef shoulder with black tahini.
When you picture a “Williamsburg restaurant,” it probably looks and feels a lot like Marlow & Sons. And that’s because this place is the original Williamsburg restaurant blueprint. It’s now a classic, and for good reason: it’s still better than almost everything else around it.
White T-shirts and leather jackets optional, but recommended.