Free Williamsburg

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

Leuca

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Leuca is a Southern Italian restaurant serving house-made pastas and wood-fired pizzas, inside the William Vale hotel. This is the hotel’s signature restaurant headed by Chef Andrew Carmellini (of SoHo Hospitality, Dutch and Locanda Verde). Sadly, the food is only so-so, especially for the inflated price tag. If you decide to eat here, skip the pizza and opt for one of the pastas which are good but will not blow you away. Even better, have a drink at Westlight upstairs for the stunning views, then enjoy an appetizer in Leuca’s lovely and spacious bar.

Featured Reviews

  • Of course, there is more to Leuca than gelato, and the menu includes all kinds of things that people love: smoked beets with ricotta salata and hazelnuts, razor clams with salsa verde, and a selection of “southern Italian dips” like ricotta with hot honey. There are pastas, including sea-urchin spaghetti (always a favorite) and a raviolo filled with duck egg. Wood-baked pizza options include a classic margherita and the broccili-rabe-topped Goomah. There’s also hanger steak, a mixed grill of lamb, and even a roasted chicken, for two, if you want to see how dish-sharing goes before you move on to dessert.

  • Andrew Carmellini, the chef known for the Dutch and Locanda Verde, and his partners in NoHo Hospitality have established several spaces in the new William Vale Hotel in Brooklyn, and this is the main event. It’s Mr. Carmellini’s first trip to the south of Italy; he named the restaurant for a town in the Salento area of Puglia. Chickpea Pugliese with bottarga, black spaghetti with cuttlefish puttanesca, and Sicilian pistachio cake are some of the regional fare. The dining room is wood-paneled. And under the executive chef Anthony Ricco, a wood-burning oven and grill deliver a few pizzas, roasted cabbage with Caesar flavors, smoked beets, and lamb mixed grill with eggplant Calabrese.

  • Leuca is the restaurant in the bottom of Williamsburg’s William Vale Hotel, and it’s very easy to pretend you’re in Manhattan here. It isn’t incredibly expensive, but you’ll still find dressed-up young people and older folks going for a civilized meal in an area where it’s otherwise hard not being young. Here you can get pizza, pasta, small plates, or some Mediterranean dips referred to as “La Scarpett’s.” And the food is good. It might not change your life, but the atmosphere is lively, and it’s a good place to go if you find yourself in Williamsburg with some people who don’t usually cross bridges.

  • So, pass on the pizza. But nor is Leuca going to be your go-to for Southern Italian food, which fills the rest of the menu. It’s a perfectly acceptable option if you’re staying at the hotel, and it’s raining outside, and you don’t feel like exploring the rest of New York City for more inspired fare. That scenarios aside, it’s not where you want to be.

Getting There

Ops

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A wood-baked pizza spot featuring pizzas with sourdough crust. They also have a great wine selection. As with any pizza place, we recommend trying the Margherita Pizza – theirs is simple and delicious. They also have a selection of small dishes (cheese plates, salads, antipasta) that change with the season.

Featured Reviews

  • Ops is a pizza spot in Bushwick, and it’s an excellent neighborhood hang. The pizza itself is good, but we were more impressed with the feeling of the place. Come by yourself for a solo meal at the bar, or bring some friends for fuel before a night out in Bushwick bars

  • Wood-fired pies with a sourdough crust are joined by a few simple openers (cheeses, salad and antipasti) at this Bushwick pizzeria, which also offers seasonal cocktails and a “Bud and amaro” combo. The converted garage space is welcoming with brick walls, tiled floors and marble-topped tables, and there’s no tipping.

  • The space at 346 Himrod Street is a former car garage that now offers seating for 45 guests. Its centerpiece is a mosaic-tiled oven that will be firing pizzas such as The Pops which comes with tomato, mozzarella, guanciale, and Pecorino. In addition to pizza, the team is serving menu options like braised lentils with toast, and caponata with bitter greens. Fadem and Tribouilloy will be splitting cooking duty, with Fadem’s focus solely on pizza and Tribouilloy running the rest of the menu

  • Ops, as the new spot is called, is helmed by Mike Fadem (who previously worked at Roman’s and Estela), Marie Tribouilloy (Buvette, the Pines), and Gavin Compton, who owns Variety Coffee next door. Fitting the team’s collective background, the vibe is casual; tips won’t be accepted; the room, a former garage, is agreeably rustic; the cocktails are seasonal; and the menu emphasizes shared plates, antipasti, and a rotating list of wood-baked sourdough pizza in varieties like the Pops (tomatoes, mozzarella, guanciale, onions, Pecorino), and the Rojo (mortadella, peppers, Crescenza cheese).

Getting There

Paulie Gee’s

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The only place in New York where we don’t mind waiting 45 minutes to eat pizza. It’s that good. (Plus we can always meander next door for craft beer at Brouwerij Lane while we wait.) Paulie’s brick oven pies, served up in a beautifully renovated warehouse that looks more like a barn you’d find in upstate New York, are our favorite Brooklyn. Sorry Robertas. Start with the Greenpointer — a white pie with Fior di Latte, Baby Arugula, Olive Oil, Fresh Lemon Juice and Shaved Parmigiano Reggiano — and be sure to try one of the pies that has hot honey on it. Wash it all down with one of the many craft beers they have on the menu. A true Greenpoint gem.

Featured Reviews

  • The “crowds” prove the “hype” at this Greenpoint pizzeria where “seriously good” pies (especially the “addictive” Hellboy) are offered with “original” toppings varied enough “to please anyone”; the “dimly lit” digs feel especially “inviting” when Paulie “drops by to say hello.”

  • Owner Paul Giannone, aka Paulie Gee, channeled a lifelong love of pizza into this charmingly delicious spot that feels as if it has been around forever. Rustic in appearance, the room’s cool concrete and brick are warmed by the glow of the wood-burning oven imported from Naples. From here, Giannone and his son work their magic. The addictive crust is beguilingly moist and chewy, perfumed with smoke, and adroitly salted. Killer wood-fired pies dominate the menu with tempting combinations, excellent ingredients, and whimsical names.

  • Pizza hobbyist turned pro Paul Giannone produces truly original pies at this rustic Greenpoint eatery. The best pizzas here are mixed-media masterworks with gorgeously blackened crusts covered in crispy nooks and pillowy bubbles. The Honey Jones—a frequent special featuring honey from a Brooklyn beekeeper, Gorgonzola, mozzarella, cherries and wispy prosciutto—beautifully balances sweet and salty.

Getting There

Roberta’s

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Roberta’s is the iconic restaurant in Bushwick that put the neighborhood on the map as an essential foodie destination. Anthony Bourdain is a fan (of course) and the New York Times call Roberta’s “one of the more extraordinary restaurants in the United States.” We agree. Start with a brick oven pizza to share — we prefer any that include their house-made spicy honey — but be sure to try one of their always-changing, seasonal entrees. The waits are tremendous, so get on the list early. Thankfully, they have a large bar where you can enjoy a craft beer or frozen cocktail while you wait.

Featured Reviews

  • What more can we say about this razor-wire resort that hasn’t already been said? New Brooklyn pizzeria. Rooftop farmer. Erstwhile beekeeper. Bread bakery. Internet radio station. The place is a hillbilly-hipster juggernaut. Never mind that the Clintons ate here. Alice Waters kicked in cash to help grow the garden. And Michel Bras came by one night to tuck into the fried chicken. It takes about 12 conversations with ten eccentrically clothed individual waiters to finally get one of them to bring you your Mini Famous Original pizza while seated at the outdoor tiki bar on a weekday afternoon, but when it finally arrives, it’s a very good Mini Famous Original pizza, and you’re practically ecstatic.

  • One of the more extraordinary restaurants in the United States… For the last two years, though, and increasingly over the last 12 months, the pizzas have been joined by the more-formal fare that a gas stove and huge ambition can create: delicate salads of foraged greens and home-grown flowers, cured meats of great complexity, painterly pasta dishes, aged roasted meats…

    These are extremely beautiful plates of food, artfully designed. The cuttlefish, in particular, would not look out of place on a starched tablecloth at Per Se. They are delicate of flavor, free of excess fats or salts, as pure an expression of new American cuisine as you are likely to find anywhere. It is shocking, and wonderful, to eat them in this cinder-block garage space six stops into Brooklyn on the L, a ratty old ski lodge built for bums interested in food rather than powder.

Getting There