Free Williamsburg

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

1 or 8

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A minimalist sushi spot in South Williamsburg from the same owners behind Bozu and Momo Sushi Shack. Everything is fresh and inventive so simply order the Omakase (the chef’s choice of sushi) and sit back and enjoy. If you’re not feeling like sushi, snacks like Shrimp Dumplings, Beef Curry Pan, and Fried Chicken are also available. On the downside, 1 or 8 is expensive for South Williamsburg with one signature roll that costs a staggering $50.

Featured Reviews

  • 1 or 8 provides a more traditional, upscale approach than most other Japanese spots in the neighborhood; perfectly executed basic rolls accompany interesting variations on classics; sashimi is expertly sliced and evenly textured, and soft tuna and Atlantic salmon are exceptionally fresh. Shrimp is tasty (if a bit tough), but the naturally fishy mackerel is nicely subtle. There are a few cooked entrées, including a vegetable plate, a chicken pot-au-feu, and pork belly two ways, but the real treat here is the omakase, course after course of treats at the chef’s whim

  • this Japanese “find” turns out “exceptional sushi” and other “original” “culinary creations” in an “inviting space” with all-white, “modern” decor; also touted for “telepathic service” and an “under-the-radar omakase” deal, it’s “a real treat” for those in the know.

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Achilles Heel

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A cozy, gorgeous gastropub tucked away in north Greenpoint, just a stones-throw from the East River. There’s a wood-burning stove up front, a small bar and a handful of tables. The hardwood floors, original tin ceilings, old-timey cocktails, and a small seaside-inspired menu hearkens back to an earlier era when Greenpoint was a working port and the space was a pub frequented by dockworkers. Come for an inventive small plate and a fancy cocktail. Achilles Heel is one of many popular restaurants in North Brooklyn created by Andrew Tarlow who also founded Diner, Marlow & Sons, and Reynard.

Featured Reviews

  • In its more peaceful hours, Achilles Heel, a revived waterfront bar with a painted stone facade in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn, reminds me of McSorley’s Old Ale House. At both places, you can rub the winter out of your hands near a hot stove (fueled by coal at McSorley’s, firewood at Achilles) whose feet are propped on beat-up floorboards. Neither spot is in any hurry, and time there moves at a pace that is decidedly prehashtag. Their light has a faraway, amber quality you could call cheerful gloom. They are among the most soothing places in the city to cradle a glass while the day shortens and slips into the night.

  • a café and bar meant to evoke the always-open grocery and drinking spot that once sustained Greenpoint dockworkers at its West Street address between 1900 and 1960. Details like the hardwood bar and mirrors are original, and once he had signed on the space, Tarlow took a solitary bar stool he’d found straight to his carpenter and asked him to make a few more. There’s a meat-slicer behind the counter for the domestic cured hams, wooden apple crates loaded with fresh produce for purchase, breads baked at Roman’s for sale, and several hundred pounds of new equipment for the baristas to make George Howell pour-over coffee and espresso drinks.

  • Brooklyn empire builder Andrew Tarlow (Reynard, Diner, Marlow and Sons) extends his reach to Greenpoint for this cute corner cafe that turns into a bar at night, offering a tightly curated drink list focused on beer and wine plus a small menu of snacky food; with its copper-topped bar, intricate wood details and funky little tables, the comfy space feels like it’s already been around for ages.

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Alameda

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A beautifully-designed cocktail bar with a small, New American menu. The space has a horseshoe-shaped bar and a few tables for dining. An intimate spot with great cocktails and one of our favorite burgers in the neighborhood. The menu is updated seasonally, but if they have it, the grilled octopus is fantastic.

Featured Reviews

  • An upmarket stand-in for your everyday hang. Alameda is the Jennifer Lawrence of bars—stunning yet instantly approachable, with a serious eye on the craft (namely, cocktails) but a daffy sense of humor (namely, those drink names). It’s a place where a tatted, T-shirt-sporting crowd can get a Guinness as readily as a biodynamic wine, where happy-hour specials include beer-and-shot combos and oysters with cucumber mignonette.

  • The knowledgeable bartenders can mix just about any cocktail with ten syllables from brand name spirits and their homemade vermouths and bitters: The Alameda Manhattan leaves an impression that all the Manhattans you drank before should have been called Newarks. The menu is limited, but each offering stands out for its inventive take on classic American fare. The cucumber mignonette sauce gives the oysters a balanced flavor that never overwhelms the natural brininess, and the frisée salad’s pork belly bits level-ups this French-American staple. And the foie gras breakfast sandwich is so deliciously decadent that you’ll dread eating your last bite.

  • A gorgeously grungy staff serves creative cocktails and high-end (yet affordable) takes on American snack fare at this Greenpoint hang; a U-shaped bar dominates the stylish space, which is decked out in white tile and handsome wood.

Getting There

Annicka

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Annicka is the city’s first restaurant with a farm brewery license, which means since it’s owned by the people behind Greenpoint Beer & Ale, it doesn’t need a seperate license to sell beer. This Greenpoint farm-to-table spot focusues on hyper-local fare, sourcing (when available) from North Brooklyn Farms. The menu will please vegetarians with lots of fresh options including Trumpet Mushrooms (with turmeric coconut milk broth, shaved spring vegetables & walnut chili oil) and Spring Lettuces (with cashew ranch, pickled beets & “all the crispy things.” Carnivores can choose from a Pork Chop, Market Fish, or a Steak with charred carrot, dandelion & black olive, to name a few dishes. The setting is quintessential new Brooklyn with outdoor seating available. Annicka is one of the best spots in the neighborhood, so be sure to give it a try!

Featured Reviews

  • the food is excellent, sometimes excitingly so. In the last gasps of winter, addictively sour, salty lemongrass chicken sausage, laced with Treviso and white kimchi, was fresh proof of the power of hearty lettuces and preserves. Wedding rice, a spin on the Persian dish tachin, a kind of crunchy-edged, savory cake, felt worthy of celebration: topped with cucumber raita, chopped almonds, and sliced chili, it hid sweet, juicy scallops and mussels within its densely packed grains. The nut-milk butter, served with flaky sea salt and sourdough, was a profoundly convincing substitute for the real thing, as was the macadamia ricotta. There was plenty for hard-core carnivores, too: a whole ham steak with eggs at brunch; pork chops; lamb ragu. But as I finished my braised beef over grits, I thought only of the unusual garnish, a thick but tender leaf that tasted vaguely of licorice. 

  • A significant and unusual feature of this airy yet intimate new spot is that all the beers, wines, ciders and spirits served are produced in New York State, often using ingredients grown in the state. That’s because the owner, Ed Raven, who also owns Greenpoint Beer & Ale nearby, is running the restaurant under a farm brewery license from the state. It permits him to serve beer by the glass without a separate license and, as a brewery owner, to open an off-premises restaurant or retail establishment. Mr. Raven has also collaborated with North Brooklyn Farms in Williamsburg for many of the ingredients used by the three chefs, each of whom has a specialty. Christian Perkins, who worked at Marlow & Daughters, is the butcher. Emma Jane Gonzalez, a vegan, and the omnivorous Kenneth Monroe come from North Brooklyn Farms. Their menu features seafood, steaks, sausages and vegetable specialties like charred sweet potatoes with kale and tahini, celery root with apples and crispy nori, and a green chile stew. Seats are at marble tables and a long, circular bar

  • the menu… ranges from fully-vegan dishes to steak (with plenty of vegetarian and fish options in the middle), and should be able to make most people happy. We tried a charred sweet potato with black tahini, and a black rice with squid and clams, and both of them were interesting and very good. The space is also big and well-designed, with a circular bar in the middle, and an open kitchen at the back, which generally contributes to the impression that there’s a lot going on here. Luckily, most of it seems to work.

Getting There

Aska

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We were unimpressed with the first iteration of Scandinavian restaurant, Aska, when it opened at Kinfolk Studio in 2013. Now, they’ve relocated to Williamsburg’s southside on South 5th Street beside the Williamsburg Bridge. If a $359 per person* tasting menu in a dark room appeals to you, this is your spot. We recommend trying the bar where you can sample a few small plates without making a reservation or breaking the bank.

Featured Reviews

  • … you half expect the chef to remove a floorboard, hand you a piece of sandpaper, and tell you to inhale as much moss-laced sawdust as you like. The restaurant unmistakably belongs to the larger Nordic movement, but it’s also an auteur-esque outlier that shatters some of the stodgy norms of fine dining. Just as one doesn’t typically encounter serious chiles at serious sushi spots -€— so as not to upset the palate, I suppose —€” I can’t think of a single other restaurant of Aska’s caliber that relishes in such concentrated flavors of funk, fermentation, oceanic offal, and death.

  • “Wait, do I eat the rock, too?” It’s an admittedly odd-sounding question, but it’s a legitimate one to ask while dining at Aska 2.0, the revival of the Michelin-starred Scandinavian kitchen helmed by Swedish wunderkind chef Fredrik Berselius. “No, just the two leaves on top,” the server replies without judgment. Those leaves are dried bladderwrack sourced from Maine, which Berselius and his workhorse band of sous chefs fry to a crackle and bead with blue-mussel emulsion. The plating you might not immediately understand, but the taste you do: It’s staunchly sea, with the briny funk of seaweed and shellfish. 

  • The new dining room is nearly unlit, and the round tables are heavy, immense, and draped in black tablecloths. The vibe is best described as hipster funeral. Yet the kitchen’s attempts at drama tend to repeat themselves. Cannibalism seems a central theme: king crab swam in king-crab consommé, and a skate wing sat in skate-wing sauce. A pile of incinerated lamb heart, served over a pad of rendered lamb fat, was something of a choking hazard (aska means “ash” in Swedish). Thankfully, a pig’s-blood pancake was heavy enough not to merit an additional bloodbath, but a birch-wood ice cream took its sylvan motif to extremes, studded with mushrooms that were variously candied, dehydrated, or meringued. 

Getting There

Bamonte’s

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If you’ve never been, a trip to Bamonte’s is a must. This classic Italian restaurant has been in operation on Withers St. since 1900. Founded by Pasquale Bamonte, the restaurant is now run by his grandson Anthony who has kept the look and traditions true to its history. Hey it’s even the place Gerry got wacked on The Sopranos. The old world American-Italian setting feels straight out of a movie, making the mediocre food worth the visit. Stick to tasty homemade pastas (ask which ones are made in-house, since they vary) and absorb the scenery.

Featured Reviews

  • Perverse perhaps to name an Italian restaurant with undeniably middling food as one of Williamsburg’s best, but to the extent that Bamonte’s captures something essential — and evaporating — about the neighborhood, to the extent that it serves both as a memento mori and a testament to longevity, it certainly belongs. To understand Carbone, one needs the 116-year-old Bamonte’s. To understand the refulgence, now dulled, of the Italian-American community centered on Graham Avenue, one needs Bamonte’s. So what if the food is strict red sauce and mid-century? Bamonte’s is among the best. Eat, if one must. Drink, if one can. But go at all costs.

  • Think white table cloths, waiters in tuxedos, and as much talk about family in Rome and Naples as Manhattan. And while its Williamsburg hood certainly changed over the last hundred-plus, the dining room at Bamonte’s has remained essentially the same.

  • Forgo the hipster stigma of Williamsburg eateries by heading to Bamonte’s, a classic red sauce joint that serves as a time capsule in both product and presentation. The waiters are tuxedoed, the dining room tables are draped in white cloth, and the menu features every item you’d expect an Italian grandmother to make. The price point is reasonable, so stock your table with the classics in a space that’s been around longer than most in this city.

  • It is the continuity from plate of pasta to plate of pasta, from generation to generation that makes Bamonte’s such a vital, quintessential part of the story of the city of New York. Eating there feels as much a ritual as a meal, and it’s a fuss-free taste of Italian-American cuisine that we rarely see these days. If you live in New York, or just want to understand the city better, you owe it yourself to eat at Bamonte’s, if only once. You won’t only be tasting history—you will become a part of it.

Getting There

BarGlory

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Nestled inside the Franklin Guesthouse hotel in Greenpoint is the second restaurant from the owners of Glasserie. Bar Glory serves a fantastic fusion of Mediterranean and Asian dishes in an unassuming environment. Start with their fantastic dumplings, our favorite being Pumpkin, Ricotta & Spicy Apricot ($4 each), though the Shrimp Shu Mai and
Lamb & Pistachio Pesto dumplings are great too. Bar Glory has a nice selection of sparkling wines, all served cold, which pair well with all of their small dishes. There are also several small grilled dishes available including octopus, greens, and lamb ribs. For an entree the Shrimp Dumpling & Massaman Coconut Curry is a winner too. Make sure you save room for dessert. The Cherry Pit Ice Cream with Lychee and Orange Blossom is as tasty as it is unique. A wonderful addition to the neighborhood.

Featured Reviews

  • Bar Glory is the second spot from the people behind Glasserie, one of Greenpoint’s best-known restaurants. Glasserie’s space is certainly cool, and the food is good – but we prefer Bar Glory. And that’s because the food here is unlike anything else in NYC. The menu here is a mashup of various Mediterranean and Asian cuisines, and it kicks off with dumplings. Unlike most dumplings you’ve probably eaten lately, these involve pumpkin, ricotta, and spicy apricot, or lamb and pistachio pesto. Each one comes out looking like a giant tortellini pasta sitting in a bath of sauce. You’ll eat it in two bites, and wish you had 12 more. Good news: Bar Glory has anticipated your needs. They also serve big bowls of shrimp dumpling massaman curry, and lamb dumplings with garlic yogurt and chili oil.

  • The larger lamb entrees ($16) are alone worth a trip. Shallots and baby squash join Azerbaijani chuchvara — tiny lamb dumplings that recall Polish uszka or Russian pelmeni — in a pool of garlic yogurt speckled with pine nuts, raisins, and crunchy slivers of fried garlic. Across the top, rivulets of chile oil run every which way, lending most bites a mounting then lingering heat. Kudos to Shem Tov and his crew for taking these straightforward dough pockets to unexpected new heights without it feeling overwrought or insincere. Then there’s kuksu, a Korean soup that wound up in Uzbekistan after Russia’s forced deportation of its Korean immigrant population in the 1930s. Though it’s commonly served cold, BarGlory opts for a hot preparation that starts with tangy, pho-like lamb stock spiked with vinegar, tender shreds of lamb shoulder, and rosy slabs of smoky, fat-rimmed grilled lamb loin. To this the kitchen adds a marbled tea-brined egg and a tangle of ragged, hand-cut semolina noodles, like the kind typically accompanying another Uzbek soup called lagman. It’s immediately one of the most interesting bowls in Brooklyn.

  • an airy multilevel space attached to the trendily designed Franklin Guesthouse, though it’s very much its own entity. In the evening, the low-lit casual atmosphere and on point vintage soundtrack make this ideal date territory, but I recommend eating here with enough people to order one of everything, including the larger bowls and sharing dishes like the whole fried fish…. Beautifully put-together food, rich with global influences, from the delicate scallops with black rice vinegar to the impressive onion jam and poppy seed bao. This continues into the cocktail menu which cherrypicks flavors from around the world from the Brown Bee with its bourbon and green tea to my favorite, the Stoned Soul Cocktail, with gin, apricot and turmeric. 

Getting There

Bozu

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An atmospheric Japanese restaurant the serves great izakaya and pretty good sushi. We’re never blown away by the latter here, but still love coming to feast on a few small dishes like Pork Betty, fried chicken, and dumplings. If you’re itching for sushi, get one of their sushi bombs which is essentially a dome-shaped roll. Their cocktails are strong and delicious and overall this is a great spot to have a few snacks with friends.

Featured Reviews

  • Here’s the kicker, Bozu isn’t even really a sushi restaurant. It’s “Japanese Tapas,” because of course it is. I think what that means is that they have all kinds of inventive small plates on the strange tiny plastic menu they hand you, a few of which we tried and cared for very little. What that also means is that you won’t find straightforward sushi here either. What you will find are sushi “bombs,” which are basically rice and fish and other stuff pressed together into a neat dome shaped thing. The bombs we liked.

  • Eating here is a blast, and their sushi is the bomb-quite literally. The unique sushi bombs (flat coin-like rice cakes topped with fish, spicy sauces and such) are one of the kitchen’s signature dishes and for good reason. But do try the tender pork Betty and delicious fried tako balls too. The menu here has been described as “authentically inauthentic.” But however named, the important thing is that the food is executed with care and attention.

  • Bozu chef-owner Makoto Suzuki has expanded the definition of Japanese tapas (if there is one) to include deep-fried kataifi-crusted shrimp, pumpkin risotto croquettes stuffed with mozzarella, and an unconventional version of sushi. Suzuki’s “bombs” are the shape of things to come—small mounds of rice tinted red from cabbage or pink from codfish roe, and topped either traditionally (salmon, tuna, eel) or not (radish, mint leaf, green tomato sauce). These light bites can be eaten at the bar, on epoxy tables ringed with Eames chairs, or on the back deck.

Getting There

Casino Clam Bar

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The most unique thing about Casino Clam Bar is the seating arrangement. There’s just one u-shaped bar with about 20 seats, and pretty much every person in the restaurant has a full view of everyone else at any given time. But that’s just part of the fun of this place, and if you enjoy shellfish, it’s worth checking out. Here, you can of course get clams casino – but they also have small menu of things like oysters, ceviche, and uni pasta.

Featured Reviews

  • The most unique thing about Casino Clam Bar is the seating arrangement. There’s just one u-shaped bar with about 20 seats, and pretty much every person in the restaurant has a full view of everyone else at any given time. But that’s just part of the fun of this place, and if you enjoy shellfish, it’s worth checking out. Here, you can of course get clams casino – but they also have small menu of things like oysters, ceviche, and uni pasta. 

  • When Williamsburg’s leading American-regional-food guru, Joe Carroll (of Fette Sau and St. Anselm fame), gets hold of a restaurant space he likes — especially one that comes with a relatively forgiving rent — he tends to hang on to it. So, where once stood Carroll’s Baltimore-style cheese-fish-sandwich shop, Lake Trout, and after that his vegetable-forward tasting room, Semilla, which closed in March, now there is Casino Clam Bar, an homage of sorts to the clam shacks and dive bars the Bergen County native and Jersey Shore aficionado has known. Think old-school meets new-school, or maybe Randazzo’s crossed with ZZ’s minus the $20 cocktails. There are raw littlenecks on the half-shell, shrimp cocktails, and chowder by the cup or bowl, but also bottarga crackers, uni pasta, hamachi collars, cod cheeks, white clam Grandma pizza, and Petrossian caviar.

Getting There

Di An Di

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A modern, distinctively Vietnamese-American version of pho — like the kind found in Houston — is finally available in New York via Di An Di.

Featured Reviews

  • A modern, distinctively Vietnamese-American version of pho — like the kind found in Houston — is finally available in New York via Di An Di. The Greenpoint restaurant, located at 68 Greenpoint Ave. near the intersection of Franklin, is owned by An Choi vets Dennis Ngo, Kim Hoang, and Tuan Bui, the former two hailing from Houston and Bui from northern Virginia.

    The premises was formerly Hail Mary, an experimental diner that closed in early 2017, and the space still has a small but welcoming front porch, where a neon bowl of pho blazes. Plants hang in profusion from the ceiling. Further in, find a high-ceilinged room with a glassed-in kitchen running along one wall. Tables are arranged in the remaining L-shaped space, which is lit magnificently with natural light via windows in the ceiling, perfect for pre-sunset Instagramming. The space is attractive, with no kitsch or sentimentalism…But the pho is what makes Di An Di particularly unique to the city. Most of the pho found in NYC dates from the decades following the 1975 fall of Saigon, when refugees, many from the Mekong Delta, came to the U.S., bringing the soup with them. Their version, often associated with Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), sported a complicated set of add-ins, including multiple sauces and vinegars, leafy fresh herbs, sprouts, green chiles, and a variety of beef cuts, as if the basic recipe begged for customization. Nevertheless, it was delectable and New Yorkers quickly grew to love it.

  • Even the most promising new restaurants in Greenpoint take a while to catch on – people usually don’t want to travel for a spot they’re not totally sure about. Di An Di is different. This attractive, plant-covered new Vietnamese restaurant is already slammed, but the better news is that it’s also already worth waiting for. They serve a pretty big menu that’s a mix of traditional Vietnamese dishes, like summer rolls and pho, and Di An Di originals, like a Vietnamese “pizza” made with grilled crispy rice paper for the crust. Everything we’ve tried is great – but you absolutely shouldn’t leave without getting at least one bowl of pho (and make sure to add the fried donut for dipping). The cocktails are great too. Overall, this is the most excited we’ve been about a new Vietnamese restaurant since Hanoi House.

Getting There