Free Williamsburg

The Williamsburg Brooklyn-based culture guide to New York and beyond.

Allswell

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A true neighborhood spot with an amazing chicken sandwich and a cozy dining room. The menu changes daily with an emphasis on farm-to-table, Southern-influenced cuisine. Allswell is one of those places you bypass when you’re trying to impress someone with the new buzz restaurant, but nonetheless frequent for good, honest food.

Featured Reviews

  • This corner restaurant on a busy stretch of Bedford Avenue has a relaxed, welcoming feel, as though it’s been around a long time. Country inn touches abound, like the large rectangle-paned windows, swatches of mismatched calico wallpaper, and, in the center, a candelabra light fixture that wouldn’t look out of place at Hogwarts. … Chicken proved nicely moist, with delicious browned skin, served in a plate of its own juice. And the winner of the night was mussels in tarragon-beer broth with a side of olive-oiled grilled bread; with tender mollusks and a nice hearty bitterness to the broth.

  • “Very Brooklyn”, this rustic Williamsburg pub serves up a “rotating menu” of “flavorful” American grub with “complex” farm-to-table ingredients; occupying “cozy, ski-chalet” quarters with an “appropriately hipsterized” staff and clientele, it’s especially “popular at brunch.”

  • this place is very good [but] subsequent visits have demonstrated that we might have gotten a bit carried away. The restaurant hasn’t necessarily declined in overall quality -Allswell is still putting out very good food – but the problem is that they change the menu daily, and things therefore become somewhat inconsistent. And when you’re talking about what sets a great restaurant apart from a legendary restaurant, consistency usually has a lot to do with it.

Getting There

Anella

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A reliable neighborhood spot in North Greenpoint that serves predictably delicious American fare. We recommend their Brick Chicken or any of their house-made pastas. Entrees come with fresh bread cooked in a clay pot. It’s amazing. There’s a long bar up front offering cocktails, several local beers on tap, and a broad selection of wines. Brunch is popular on weekends and if you go, be sure to order their biscuits. A solid choice.

Featured Reviews

  • But the narrow bar and dining room are warm as candlelight, decorated in that nice urban variation on farmhouse chic that is common to restaurants in north Brooklyn, all brick and reclaimed hardwood, with Edison bulbs hanging from the tin ceiling that cast shadows over pockmarked plaster and ancient paint. (Beards and cardigans abound at the tables, as well as vintage dresses, heavy clogs.) Service is easygoing, nice. And the food is a wonder: a tight and focused menu of simple, seasonally appropriate food from Joseph Ogrodnek, a talented chef who has been in the kitchen for almost a year.

  • A never-too-crowded neighborhood place that serves the kind of crowd-pleasing food you would be happy to eat multiple times a week. Pastas? Check. A burger? Yep. Roast chicken, and a kale salad that actually tastes better than one you could make for yourself at home? You get the idea. Plus, the warm dinner bread comes in a little flower pot that you would have to be dead inside not to like. And while the framework of the menu is always the same, the individual dishes change with the seasons.

Getting There

Brooklyn Barge Bar

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Simply amazing views of the New York skyline inches away from Transmitter Park. The food is unremarkable, but will do the trick if you’re starving. Come instead for the view and the drinks and you will be delighted. Open May – October and great for groups.

Featured Reviews

  • Brooklyn’s very first bar on a boat… with unparalleled, panoramic views of the waterfront and skyline. Flanked by bright red shipping container kitchens, which serve pub grub basics like burgers, zucchini sticks and chicken sandwiches (expect more ambitious fare, such as slow-smoked barbecue, to emerge next year), a ramp leads the way to the gently undulating bar area, which dispenses nautical cocktails like Rum Punch and the Barg-O-Lotta—pilsner, hot sauce, tomato juice and lime—as well as wine by the glass or bottle, buckets of beer, and a trio of local drafts.

  • William Drawbridge joins the grand tradition of floating boîtes (The Frying Pan, Grand Banks) with this permanently docked 100-person barge, offering seating onboard and on land. Cocktails play on summery classics, including the Barg-elata (pilsner, lime, Chamoy hot sauce) and a Salty Spotted Chihuahua sloshed with tequila, lemonade and blueberries. Beyond booze, find straightforward fare like a sirloin burger on brioche, skirt-steak sandwiches with BBQ sauce and salmon fillets with lemon-citrus glaze.

  • After a couple drinks on this barge/bar/restaurant on the East River in Greenpoint, you can close your eyes and almost believe you’re on your own private boat (more speedboat than yacht, but still). But you won’t even want to do that for long, because the Manhattan skyline views are so good.

     

Getting There

Brooklyn Bowl

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Bowling alleys aren’t generally known for their food, but most don’t have award-winning chefs cooking for them either. At Brooklyn Bowl, food is prepared by the same folks behind Blue Ribbon Sushi and Blue Ribbon Brasserie, so you know you’re in good hands. Brooklyn Bowl is known for their fried chicken, which you can order family style with a collection of delicious sides. (Get the collards!) French bread pizzas, burgers, and po’ boys are also available. It’s best to visit during the day, unless you’re there for a concert since diners will be charged a cover fee. And of course, it’s also a great place to bowl, albeit more expensive than its neighbor The Gutter.

Featured Reviews

  • This bowling alley and live-music venue fully embraces the new mania for local nostalgia. The space takes its design cues from Coney Island with old freak-show posters and carnival-game relics, and all of the beer sold inside—by Sixpoint, Kelso and the Brooklyn Brewery—is made in the borough. This is a great place to kill a few hours with a big rowdy group: You can tackle a pitcher and the stoner-food menu from the Blue Ribbon team (delicious fatty brisket, Old Bay–fried chicken) laneside between frames. The plush tufted couches are the most luxurious alley seating we’ve ever seen.

  • Brooklyn Bowl’s a 16-lane strikers’ paradise that combines the sleek amenities of Lucky Strike with the anti-sleek Williamsburgery of The Gutter. Blue Ribbon’s famous fried chicken is on the menu and live bands replace the top 40 hits you’re used to jamming out to under the disco ball of your hometown lanes.

Getting There

Cape House

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A New England-style clam shack smack dab in the middle of Bushwick/East Williamsburg. The space, situated at a busy intersection, will nonetheless transport you to Cape Cod. We recommend anything from the sea (of course) but the Chicken Sandwich and Burger are also pretty solid. Recommended dishes include Clam Fritters and the Haddock and Fries. The outdoor courtyard has ample seating and is the perfect spot to down a Cape House Lager while you munch on some Whole Belly Clams.

Featured Reviews

  • New England transplants will be happy to know they don’t have to go any further than Bushwick to get authentic chowder. Cape House, a clam shack and bar, offers all the classics and a few new options. Traditionalists might go for the whole belly clams, scallops or clam strips, available on a roll or as a platter ($8–$25), or the creamy chowder ($5 for a small, $9 for a large). Not a seafood person? Try a Worcester-style hot dog with chili ($5) or the fried chicken sandwich ($11). If you’re in the mood for a more formal meal, order the negroni-braised octopus with herb salad ($20) or the baked haddock with dill cream sauce ($23).

  • Styled after a New England clam shack, this Bushwick eatery offers raw, fried and grilled seafood, along with mai tais, frozen drinks and canned and draft beers. There are high-tops as well as regular tables, plus a lively outdoor counter facing the windows.

  • Cape House delivers on its most important promise: terrific clams in a pleasant, casual, boozy-if-you-want-it environment. Get here soon though, while the patio’s still an option, for a final taste of summer before we all have to huddle inside.

Getting There

The Commodore

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The Commodore is the place to go when you’re itching for a campy frozen drink, in a retro setting, with some damn good food to boot. The dive feels like a bar you’d find in Milwaukee in the 70s and once you order a Frozen Pina Colada with Ameretto Float you’ll be transported to that very era. People love The Commodore for its Chicken Sandwich – and with good reason since its made by the same people responsible for Pies n’ Thighs. The menu also features nachos, a burger, and many more artery-clogging delicacies. It’s a great bar so, sure, it gets crowded, but don’t let that keep you away.

Featured Reviews

  • It “looks and acts like a dive bar”, but this Williamsburg standby houses “some of the finest fried chicken and biscuits” going, along with other “revisited” Southern fare and “fabulous cocktails”; its “’70s den” look-alike digs are predictably “packed on weekends”, and the “order-your-food-at-the-bar system isn’t ideal”, but “super-cheap” tabs and an overall “chill vibe” go a long way.

  • First came the gastropub, an import from Britain featuring upmarket pub grub in an ale-drinking setting. Now, welcome the gastrodive, which further blurs the lines between restaurant and bar. The Commodore in Williamsburg, with its old arcade games, Schlitz in a can and stereo pumping out the Knight Rider theme song, offers the city’s best cheap-ass bar eats, served in a seedy venue where folks come to get blotto. The short menu—with descriptions as curt as the service you’ll encounter while ordering your food from the bartender—reads like a classic collection of fryolator junk. But the “hot fish” sandwich, for one, is a fresh, flaky, cayenne-rubbed catfish fillet poking out of both sides of a butter-griddled sesame-seed roll

  • The food is the work of Stephen Tanner, a native of Albany, Ga., who spent much of the last decade working in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, restaurants known for straightforward fare and strong flavors: Diner, Egg, Pies ‘n’ Thighs. Mr. Tanner is talented, but the food at the Commodore shouldn’t be cross-examined too closely. It’s mostly fried, or in a bun, or both. Ingredients are repeated. So are seasonings. So what? The Dead Kennedys never needed more than three chords.

  • In case you aren’t already familiar, The Commodore is a Williamsburg restaurant by Pies ‘n’ Thighs alum Stephen Tanner, and it’s bad for you. Bad because merely looking at the food here will jack up your cholesterol thirty points, and worse because everything is so good that you’ll crave it all the time. Eventually you too will be cutting imaginary deals with your organs to justify frequent visits.

Getting There

Diner

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Located near the Williamsburg Bridge, when you step into Diner, which inhabits a refurbished 1926-dining car, you’re immediately transported to another era. Diner was one of Williamsburg’s original “hip” dining establishments and has not lost any of its caché. The menu changes frequently, but expect delicious takes on diner classics and traditional American cuisine.

Featured Reviews

  • “Handwritten menus” announce the daily roster of “consistently excellent” New American bites (including a “phenomenal” burger) at this “funky” local fixture in Williamsburg; set in a 1920s dining car and overseen by a “knowledgeable” crew, it has a “quintessential hipster” vibe that carries over to the outside seating area.

  • Andrew Tarlow’s first restaurant is no longer the Southside loner it was when it opened in 1999. These days, it’s credited with creating and typifying the hip, seasonal, and Americana-mining New Brooklyn restaurant. The kitchen’s alumnus list is an all-star team of the Williamsburg restaurant scene — it includes founders of the Commodore, El Cortez, the Meat Hook, Pies ’n’ Thighs, and Saltie — and indirectly spawned a legion of admirers and imitators. Diner, though, at least pretends not to know it, even if the crowd is more well-heeled and maybe a little more foreign. The servers are still effortlessly cool, the floor remains uneven, and specials will forever be written out on a piece of paper tableside by a server who’ll sit down with you, if there’s room, and explain what’s up.

  • Diner has been a Williamsburg institution for a decade now. Originally built out of necessity by two friends in need of a place to eat, drink and hang out – it soon became not only their home base, but every other recent settler’s home as well. It’s like the hipster Plymouth Rock. As expected, Diner takes the form of, well, a diner. It’s basically a hole in the wall, and if it weren’t for the constant crowds, you’d probably wonder how a place that looks like this stays in business. Everyone inside is most definitely cooler than you, but they don’t think they’re better than you.

Getting There

Esme

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A slightly upscale take on classic American dishes. Esme has a bright, relaxed ambiance and great food. Stick with simpler dishes like the Roasted Chicken or the Grilled Salmon with Roasted Fennel — Esme is at its best when they’re not trying too hard. During the weekend, grab a seat at their sunny bar, close to the espresso machine (their coffee is fantastic) for an ideal brunch.

Featured Reviews

  • This is a neighborhood spot through-and-through. At peak brunch times, you might encounter a short wait, but never long enough to give you the usual soul-sucking feeling that there are about 137 better things you could be doing with your Saturday. The space is light and bright – “cute” enough that you feel like a productive member of society even if you’re so hungover you can’t form sentences, but laid-back enough that you can wallow in your hangover without judgment. When it’s warm, there’s even a covered back patio that beats any wobbly-table sidewalk situation any day.

  • Updated American classics deliver “big taste” at this relaxed Greenpoint bistro, whose understated style features reclaimed church pews and subdued hues; craft (and draft) cocktails are mixed at a wooden-ceilinged bar under exposed-filament bulbs that create a soft, “romantic” glow.

  • This sunny spot looking out onto Manhattan Avenue turns into a candlelit date destination by night. Upscale American dishes are served in a cozy, warm room filled with wooden two-tops, with a raised seating area in front. The pork-belly appetizer is both crispy and succulent, with four meaty cubes sitting in a mix of sweet apples, cranberries, and cabbage. While Spanish white anchovies are bit underwhelming, both in portion and flavor, the “borscht salad,” appropriate for the neighborhood’s Polish heritage, mixes small Brussels sprouts with wedges of pickled beets and baby potatoes, all satisfyingly melded by rich butter and dill.

Getting There

Extra Fancy

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A New England-style seafood pub that’s more of a laid-back dive than its Extra Fancy moniker would suggest. The bar up front is spacious and isn’t usually too crowded. It’s a nice place to have a Narragansett Lager and some Littleneck Clams. Salt Cod Fritters, Lobster Roll and the Steamed Mussels are standouts on a menu that’s mainly from the sea but also features a few Southern classics like Deviled Eggs and Cornbread. In the warmer months they have a patio with frosty frozen drinks and snacks.

Featured Reviews

  • Williamsburg’s Extra Fancy serves fried, grilled, and raw seafood, like fish & chips and lobster bisque fries, plus a notable secret sauce-topped burger. It’s open late — until 2am every night — and its special late-night menu will have you covered should you ever get a midnight lobster roll craving. The brick-and-wood interior is reminiscent of a New England seafood shack, albeit a hipster one.

  • lthough pedigreed chef Ross Florence, late of Le Bernardin, recently parted ways with Extra Fancy, the spot still turns out some seriously tasty seafood snacks. The Cape Cod clam fritters ($9) arrive at the table piping hot and golden brown, accompanied by a tangy chive-buttermilk sauce. Each fried nugget is studded with meaty littlenecks, sweet corn kernels and spicy bits of chili. Landlubbers can chow down on a juicy, grilled kielbasa ($12) served with tangy red-cabbage sauerkraut and swipes of caraway-mustard butter on a hot-dog roll.

  • Williamsburg “meets New England” at this “swinging” seafood joint whose clam shack–inspired menu features “fine oysters” and “fun comfort food” backed by “expertly made” cocktails; the “lovely” garden makes it a “perfect day-drinking” destination, but it’s also “great for late-night nosh.”

Getting There

Five Leaves

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Five Leaves sits on the border of Greenpoint and Williamsburg and serves eclectic food at all hours of the day. Fresh flowers are everywhere you look, and the décor is nautically-themed which is always a plus in our books. Though seasonal entrees are sublime don’t miss the burger. Our favorite pancakes are from here on the weekend brunch menu, but we also love the truffle fries. The place has a well-deserved reputation for attracting douchey scenesters and the nouveau riche, making Five Leaves a fun (if a bit irritating) spot to people watch. On the downside, prepare to wait.

Featured Reviews

  • This all-day Greenpoint “staple” “remains a favorite” in “hipsterville” for “out-of-this-world” burgers, “incredible pancakes” and other “reliable” New American eats; despite often-“crowded” digs and occasional “attitude”, it’s pretty “perfect for brunch” – with the “long lines” to prove it.

  • We still don’t love the food as much as some people seem to, and it can still be very cramped and crowded. But we will say that the consistency has improved – a lot. Brunch is and always has been the best time of day to eat here, but dinner can be a good move too, assuming you know what to order and most importantly – that you can be patient with the scene around you. Then again, I’m writing this from the perspective of someone who is more interested in the eating that goes at Five Points than in the hanging out that goes on at Five Points. If you’re 23, just got a job at Condé Nast, and have yet to taste a truffle fry, bump up this rating considerably. You’re gonna love it here.

Getting There