Free Williamsburg

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

All Hands

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Chef Peter Lipson (Northern Spy, Empellon) is serving up seafood with a view of the Williamsburg bridge in this South Williamsburg cafe. The interior design is rustic-chic and dishes like Passatelli Pasta (littleneck clams, calabrian chili, smoked pecorino) and Monkfish (caulifower, watercress, fennel bisque) do not disappoint. It’s also a great spot to have a drink and a light snack if you’re feeling peckish and want a fancy cocktail in a lovely setting.

Featured Reviews

  • Picturesque views of the bridge with homey plates of seafood on the menu. Chef Peter Lipson—whose resume includes stints around the world in addition to credits in parts of the Empellon empire, as well as Northern Spy—channels his varied career into the ocean, presenting dishes almost entirely sourced from the sea. Bluefish cured in sake comes with hunks of grapefruit doused in fish sauce with herbs. Passatelli—which are noodles formed from breadcrumbs—serves as a base for littleneck clams with rich Calabrian chili, smoked pecorino and more crunchy breadcrumbs.

Getting There

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

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

Beco

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A charming Brazilian cafe and bar with live music, traditional cuisine and great cocktails. Try the Maracuja Capiroska cocktail (Vodka, Passion fruit and pressed sugar cane) or a Traditional Caipirinha. For food, don’t miss the tasty cheese bread and the Feijoada (Brazil’s National Dish) which is a hearty, slow-cooked stew made with black beans and pork. Check their calendar for live Brazilian music. We love this place.

Featured Reviews

  • Daniel Giddings says he and his partners envisioned it as a modest Sao Paolo boteco, where you can laze about while popping made-to-order pao de queijo and sip cocktails made with fresh passion fruit and pressed sugar cane. As Giddings describes it, the decor harks back to the days of Pele, and “doesn’t scream ‘Brazil’ in your face, but it’s more like what a boteco is — a real hangout.” You can hang there during brunch that includes acai and granola, omelettes, bife a cavalo (Brazilians refer to their steak and eggs as “steak on horseback”), and a feijoada that’s prepared over the course of two days

  • Tucked away from the bustle of Bedford Avenue, this neighborhood gem offers delicious Brazilian food in an intimate candlelit setting. Dinner highlights include a traditional feijoada—smoky and thick stew with ham hock and black beans—and a shrimp stew that gets its bright flavor from coconut milk and cilantro. Brazilian churrasco—grilled meat—is also available, in the form of a simple filet mignon, nicely charred and served with garlicky collard greens.

  • And you can have a meal at Beco, even though there’s no real kitchen. A short-order cook in the corner of the bar quickly turns out satisfying versions of classics, like feijoada ($18), on a small cooktop. That dish arrives disassembled — beans and meat in a cup, rice and collard greens on a plate, toasted yuca flour in a bowl. It’s big enough for two, but too tasty to share. Split the bar snacks instead, both the excellent pão de queijo ($4), a basket of six puffed cheesy breads the size of Ping-Pong balls; and the sliced linguiça sausage ($6), made by a Brazilian butcher in Newark and browned in a skillet, then finished with cachaça.

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

Cafe Mogador

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An American cafe on the quieter end of Bedford Ave great for a casual, low-key meal. Rabbithole is not a “destination” restaurant and that’s a good thing when you want a reliably good brunch or an unpretentious dinner spot. The Lamb Burger is popular as is the Homemade Potato Gnocci with Wild Mushrooms. They have a small garden for outdoor dining in the warmer months.

Featured Reviews

  • “Everything is delicious” at these “popular” Moroccan “standbys” that are especially known for their “unbeatable” brunches; “tight seating” and “long waits” are part of the deal, but “gentle prices” help, and Williamsburg’s “cute indoor garden” is especially “charming.”

  • It’s a casual place serving Moroccan/Israeli food, although they do a more-or-less standard breakfast and brunch. Weekends get slammed, however, so expect a wait for brunch and dinner. And try to sit in the greenhouse-like area out back. It’s a good place to eat a chicken stew with couscous.

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

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

Egg

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An uber-popular breakfast and brunch joint. The food is fantastic but the lines are excruciating.

Featured Reviews

  • Egg has been in heavy rotation for what seems like decades at this point (probably since 2009). We love this place. There’s no bullsh*t here, just a stark white space with friendly service and reasonably priced, high quality food. The only downside? Don’t even bother trying to compete with the crowds on the weekends.

  • Known for “one of the best brunches in town”, this Williamsburg daytimer packs ’em in for “very good”, “simple” Southern dishes made with ingredients from its own upstate farm; there are “lengthy” waits on weekends, but given the “hip”crowd, at least there’s good “people-watching.”

  • This Southern-accented breakfast-only abode has no parallel in Billyburg or beyond. Perch on mismatched chairs at a paper-covered table, wake up at a leisurely speed to the old-time folk music on the sound system, and tuck into a cheap meal that may include eggs Rothko (a slice of brioche with a hole in the middle that accommodates a sunny-side-up egg, all of which is covered with sharp cheddar) or a terrific country-ham biscuit sandwich.

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