Restaurants in Brooklyn

Deliso Confections

Cuisine: | Featured in Best Of, Holiday Eats

Who would have imagined that a former Wall Street stockbroker would go on to make some of the best chocolates in Brooklyn?  It’s worth a pilgrimage out to Bay Ridge for a box of Anthony Deliso’s work-of-art and flavorful truffles, made with 100% Belgian chocolate and real fruit purees, top-shelf liquors, freshly ground nuts and all-natural infusions.  We especially love the tiny Dark Chocolate Coffee Cups filled with espresso cream, beautifully balanced Sea Salt Caramels, and the boozy Bourbon Pecan Truffles, the nut-studded chocolate shells giving way to a geyser of full-bodied whiskey...

Handsome Dan’s Stand

Cuisine: | Featured in Uncategorized

Roberta’s

Cuisine: | Featured in Uncategorized

Restaurant Spotting: The Backyard at The Pines

Cuisine: American | Featured in Restaurant, Restaurant Spotting, Summer Eats

A restaurant with outdoor space of any sort already has a leg up in the city, even if it’s only a pair of rickety two-top tables deposited on the sidewalk. So the full blown, leafy backyard at The Pines in Gowanus makes it an idyllic summertime spot, a sunny reprieve from the restaurant’s dim, no frills interiors. So while you can still hunker down indoors with tender Squab with Parsnip and Blueberry and house-cranked Cappellacci with Oxtail and Crab Brodo, be aware that visiting The Pines’ backyard means stepping into a different restaurant entirely. Because Romano has re-imagined the scruffy urban enclave as a charming Basque cider bar and grill, offering a unique menu of wood-fired items, prepared from a makeshift, backyard kitchen.

Restaurant Spotting: Brooklyn’s Dinosaur Bar-B-Que

Cuisine: Barbecue | Featured in Restaurant, Sneak Peek

Almost a year and a half after it was first announced to the public, the newest outpost of Dinosaur Bar-B-Que has finally roared to life on Union Street in Brooklyn, straddling leafy Park Slope and industrial Gowanus. It’s really the perfect location for the rowdy restaurant — well enough removed from potentially put out residents on the other side of Fourth Avenue, and less than a half a block’s stumble to the subway.

Roberta’s Pizza

Cuisine: Pizzas | Featured in RG's Favorites

This place singlehandedly put Bushwick on the map and we’re not even exaggerating. So what’s the big deal? Killer pizzas, for starters, and then there’s the seasonal plates, many scattered with freshly picked ingredients from Roberta’s very own garden. The best part is you’d never know it from the outside… or the inside, for that matter. Step inside this dingy-looking, converted garage and you’ll feel like you’ve just entered some roadside bar with loud music playing, long wooden tables with benches, painted cement walls and twirling ceiling fans. You’ll probably be inclined to grab a beer, or even better, a cider and you should order something to pass the time while you wait for a table, which is par for the course these days.

Restaurant Spotting: Antica Pesa

Cuisine: Italian | Featured in Hottest Newcomers, Restaurant

Brooklyn’s own Berry Street is a somewhat unlikely location for the first stateside outpost of Antica Pesa, a 90-year-old restaurant situated in a former Vatican tollhouse in Trastevere. Because instead of being perfectly suited to shabby chic hipsters, the sleek new restaurant seems destined to follow in the path of its predecessor, becoming an out-of-the-way haven for the rich, famous and jet set (an image search yields twenty pictures of Madonna, Ashton Kutcher and Thomas Hardy, juxtaposed with delicately swirled plates of Cacio e Pepe).

Where to Eat At The Great Googa Mooga 2013

Cuisine: | Featured in Eating Events

The Great GoogaMooga sounds like one of the most fantastic food festivals imaginable. Almost 200 of New York’s best restaurants, breweries and wine purveyors assembled in the bucolic Nethermead Meadow in Prospect Park. Fun, ticketed pop-up dinners like Roberta’s Urban Renaissance Faire, April Bloomfield’s The Spotted Pig Haus (a play on the German beer garden), and Gabe Stulman’s Little Wisco Seafood Boil and BBQ. And oh yeah, there’s music too.

Q & A with Traif & Xixa’s Jason Marcus

Cuisine: | Featured in Chef Q&A

A Jewish chef cooking pork and shellfish in East Williamsburg, one of the largest Hasidic neighborhoods in the city, may seem like little more than a running gag. Especially when he calls that restaurant Traif. And yes, the cheeky irony may initially attract visitors this corner of Brooklyn (the colorful space festooned with heart-studded piggies is also good for a laugh). But Jason Marcus’ thoughtful brand of cooking guarantees their return, long after the joke has worn off.

Drink Spotting: Mint Juleps at Maison Premiere

Cuisine: Bar | Featured in Drink Spotting

If what excites you most about the upcoming Kentucky Derby is horseracing and oversized hats, well, you’ve come to the wrong place. For us, the annual event is nothing less than an unabashed celebration of the mint julep, one of our favorite, seasonal cocktails. Considered the signature drink of the Kentucky Derby for over 70 years, the standard julep is made with bourbon, sugar, water, and mint, and traditionally served in a silver or pewter cup. But this in NYC, not the Deep South. And our cocktail scene is infinitely more exciting — so why limit yourself to sipping a single rendition of the centuries old tipple all night? That’s why we’re placing our bets on Maison Premiere as a serious front-runner this Saturday, in a race to become the city’s top Kentucky Derby destination.

Dish Spotting: Pork Slope’s Shrimp Po’ Boy

Cuisine: American | Featured in Dish Spotting

With a name like Pork Slope, it may seem a transgression to order anything off of the menu that didn’t formerly have a snout. In chef Dale Talde’s hands, however, a seriously substantial Shrimp Po’Boy is anything but a cop-out; a mere half-hearted gimme to the other-white-meat adverse. In fact, like most of his re-worked working class creations, it’s not only insanely delicious, but a gold standard of its kind. Instead of the expected French bread (a sturdier, more reliable conveyance for the overstuffed innards of the average New Orleans sub), Talde substitutes two infinitely tastier slabs of his addictive black pepper butter toast.

Gwynnett St. – Reviewed

Cuisine: American | Featured in Reviews

I’d return to Gwynnett St. for the whiskey bread alone. It may sound silly, but it’s that good. Served warm, this crusty, homemade loaf is as sweet as cornbread, soft on the inside, and dosed with plenty of whiskey. It’s also the simplest thing on the menu… by far. The food at this newish Williamsburg spot is entirely complicated, and yet utterly satisfying, a rare feat as far as restaurants go.

Best New Vendors Smorgasburg 2013

Cuisine: | Featured in Best Of

A tongue-in-cheek reference to the Scandinavian Smörgåsbord, an extensive buffet that features a variety of hot and cold dishes, Smorgasburg more than lives up to its name. Brooklyn’s mammoth, all-food flea market features up to 100 independent vendors, specializing in everything from Deep-Fried Anchovies and Filipino Spring Rolls, to dairy-free Ice Cream and artisanal Pigs in a Blanket. With competition so fierce, it’s more important than ever for upstart artisans to bring their “A” game. And, from what we tasted at Smorgasburg last Saturday, these elite new vendors are already rising to the head of the class.

Restaurant Spotting – The Wallace

Cuisine: American | Featured in Restaurant

Ringed by a barbershop, a Subway franchise and a bodega, Brooklyn’s The Wallace seems an unlikely spot for Seared Sea Scallops with Hazelnut Cauliflower Puree, or Duck Breast with Fingerling Potatoes, Shaved Brussels Sprouts and Duck Demi Glace. And even though the restaurant is in coveted proximity to the Barclay’s Center, the massive new sports and entertainment complex on Atlantic Avenue, it’s not a place you’re likely to just stumble upon. But it’s one you might want to make a concentrated effort to seek out.

Q & A with Dinosaur Bar-B-Que’s John Stage

Cuisine: Barbecue | Featured in Chef Q&A

When you think of the great BBQ capitals of America, like Texas, North Carolina or Tennessee, you’ll notice that East Coast states never make the list. Yet John Stage, founder of Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, has spent the last 25 years working magic with a smoker, producing some of tenderest brisket, tastiest pulled pork, and most lip-smacking ribs you’re likely to find North of the Mason-Dixon line.

Where to Eat Out During “Dine in Brooklyn”

Cuisine: | Featured in Best Of, Eating Events

Manhattan’s “Restaurant Week” may be over, but there’s still plenty of opportunity for frugal foodies to get in on the fun. That’s because “Dine in Brooklyn” is just around the corner. From March 11th to March 21st, over 200 area restaurants will be offering three-course dinners for just $28, three-course lunches for $20.13, and even some “two for the price of one” brunches. Sounds like a pretty good deal, right?

Zenkichi

Cuisine: Japanese | Featured in Best Of

There’s nothing that adds more to the romance of Valentine’s Day than a sexy atmosphere.  While it might be just a restaurant, dining at Zenkichi, a sexy izakaya in Brooklyn, is a Bond-like experience.   You’ll happen on a corner with an unmarked building in Williamsburg.  Slip inside and down the stairs and suddenly you’re in Japan (well almost).  There’s rocks on the floor, bamboo trim, and trickling water in the background to set the mood.  Oh, and each booth has a privacy curtains. Every time the server enters they have to ring a bell. Sound sexy? Damn right.   Start with a seasonal sake from their impressive selection and an order of  the Salmon with its own Roe, Lamb Chop Tataki with ginger onion soy sauce and Sweet Duck Salad with soft egg and baby greens.  For dessert,...

Pates et Traditions’ Buckwheat Crepes

Cuisine: French | Featured in Best Of, Winter Eats

This charming Williamsburg creperie has over 24 savory crepe options, but what sets them apart from traditional, white-flour crepes is that they’re made with 100% organic buckwheat flour.  That’s the way they make them in Breton, France, where they call them galettes.  Ground from buckwheat seeds, they taste bold and slightly bitter, with a dark whisper of mushroom.  We haven’t even gotten to fillings, like bacon, onions, eggplant, or potatoes.  And with fall options like the Bergere Crepe with goat cheese, swiss, fig, honey, caramelized onions, and rosemary, we can pretty much guarantee you’ll find something  to love.  Perhaps Trois Fromages with potatoes, camembert, roquefort and goat, or the Sultan with chicken, bacon, cumin and cream.   And there’s plenty of sweet buckwheat crepe offerings, so you can get your whole grains for dessert, too. Try the Bananas Flambe Crepe or Orange...

Q & A with Pork Slope’s Dale Talde

Cuisine: Asian Fusion | Featured in Chef Q&A

Considering he’s currently one of the most buzzed about chefs in Brooklyn, it’s hard to believe that Dale Talde was told to pack his knives and go, twice, on Bravo’s reality cooking show, Top Chef. But for fans and customers that have come to know and love him for his outgoing personality, down-to-earth restaurants, and unique fusion dishes like Pretzel Pork and Chive Dumplings and Crispy Oyster and Bacon Pad Thai, a TV show title doesn’t mean much.

Talde

Cuisine: Asian Fusion | Featured in Best Of, Hottest Newcomers

Did Talde really open less than a year ago?  We feel like we’ve been singing the praises of Pretzel Pork and Chive Potstickers, Korean Fried Chicken, and Crispy Oyster and Bacon Pad Thai for as long as we can remember.  And the dinner crowds haven’t even remotely thinned since last January, when chef/owner Dale Talde first introduced his Saigon Crepes, Whole Roasted Branzino in Banana Leaves, and Hawaiian Bread Buns.  It’s a testament that—even though he was told to pack his knives and go (twice) on Bravo’s reality show, Top Chef—he’s sure to be a fixture on NYC’s dining scene for many years to...