A spread at Cobble Hill Coffee Shop (Photo by Scott Lynch)
The 9 Best Diners in Brooklyn
New school or old school, here's where you can bask in those classic diner vibes and get a great meal.
There’s no restaurant genre more hopelessly over-romanticized than the diner. And rightly so! Diners are awesome, both because of their core promise—a cheap, decent meal in a friendly (or, often, a “gruff-but-lovable”) setting—and for their power as nostalgia triggers. Do you have a favorite diner or three from the different eras of your youth, the sites of late-night adventures, hungover breakfasts and goofy aimless hangs with your best friends? Of course you do.
Thing is, though, most diners, in Brooklyn and everywhere else, aren’t actually any good. Sure, any lived-in-looking space with a row of booths can spark a good memory or five, but the food at some of these long-established places (not to mention a few of the faux-retro newcomers) is straight-up terrible. And the prices at some of these spots aren’t really all that cheap these days!
So here are nine of our favorite Brooklyn diners, both classic and contemporary, all of which earn high marks for both their aesthetic appeal and the quality of their food. Enter hungry, slide into a booth, leave feeling good about life.
Photo by Scott Lynch
1. Kellogg’s Diner
518 Metropolitan Avenue, at the corner of Union Avenue, Williamsburg
One of the great stories of 2024 has been the spectacularly successful reboot of Kellogg’s Diner, the iconic, nearly-century-old spot in Williamsburg that was saved from bankruptcy by co-owners Louis Skibar and Nico Arze (who also helped design the place) and given a completely overhauled, ridiculously appealing menu by chef Jackie Carnesi and pastry chef Amanda Perdomo.
The new Kellogg’s opened in September and everyone involved just totally knocked it out of the park. The food is all delicious, especially Carnesi’s Tex-Mex dishes (the flat nachos, either of the enchiladas, and the deep-fried Texas French toast are the early must-orders), as well as Perdomo’s passionfruit taijin icebox pie, and the endlessly-photographed, hilariously jiggly strawberry pretzel salad.
And the space itself looks and feels fantastic, with the same basic layout as before, but freshened up. It’s still extremely a diner, and it’s also most probably my favorite “new” restaurant of the year, even if it hasn’t been completely devoid of drama.
Photo by Scott Lynch
2. Three Decker Diner
695 Manhattan Avenue, at the corner of Norman Street, Greenpoint
Another hugely successful North Brooklyn makeover came in early 2023, when Gavin Compton (of Variety Coffee) and chef Eduardo Sandoval (of Blue Collar Burger, among many other ventures) relaunched the venerable Three Decker Diner on a prime Greenpoint corner.
First opened in 1945, the place still has all of those great old-school vibes, but the menu has been completely overhauled, with the classic dishes getting new love (and more seasoning!), and lots of new things added to the party, like a whole section devoted to some terrific “Tex-Mex Treats.” You could eat here three or four times a week and not get bored!
“Everybody up and around the block has been here for a long time,” Sandoval told Brooklyn Magazine. “So first and foremost we wanted to remain part of the local Greenpoint community. We really want this to be an everyday spot. And the neighborhood’s been great. It’s been a very pleasant surprise how many of the ‘old’ regulars have kept coming to eat here.”
Photo by Scott Lynch
3. Montague Diner
148 Montague Street, between Henry and Hicks Streets, Brooklyn Heights
Oh snap, here’s another excellent revamp of a Brooklyn classic, Montague Diner, which an all-star team of locals, movie stars (!), and seasoned restaurateurs opened in the old Happy Days space in the heart of Brooklyn Heights last March. The menu here pretty much sticks with familiar favorites, from omelettes and latke to cheeseburgers and tater tots, to roast half-chickens and slices of pie to grilled cheese sandwiches and bowls of tomato soup—basically, everything you could want for breakfast, lunch and/or dinner, with everything on the menu available all day and night, all in a setting that’s totally a diner but also fun and even kind of glamorous.
Photo by Scott Lynch
4. Tom’s Restaurant
782 Washington Avenue, at the corner of Sterling Place, Prospect Heights
Famous for its pancakes (in more than a dozen varieties, though lemon ricotta is the way to go), its neighborly vibe, for and for its epic lines during prime weekend brunch hours, Tom’s has been making people happy on this corner of Washington Avenue since 1936, and the place shows no sign of slowing down now. Great history, great food. It always feels like Brooklyn in here.
Photo by Scott Lynch
5. Mike’s Coffee Shop
328 Dekalb, at the corner of Hall Street, Clinton Hill
The unassuming Mike’s had been holding it down on this Pratt-adjacent corner for nearly 70 years now, and the place still bustles on a Sunday morning. Everyone working the joint seems to actively care about your meal, and the food, especially the breakfast stuff—French toast, eggs, sausages, bacon, plus a small glass of OJ with every order—totally satisfies. Mike’s always looks the same (the framed Daily News review is from 1986), and If you’re in the mood to sit in a diner, you will not be disappointed by the experience here.
Photo by Scott Lynch
6. Baby Blues Luncheonette
97 Montrose Avenue, between Leonard Street and Manhattan Avenue, East Williamsburg
This warm and inviting breakfast and lunch spot on Montrose opened toward the end of 2022, and it’s by far the best of the retro-vibing but actually-spanking-new diners the borough has seen in recent years. Like a local joint that’s been there forever, but spruced up a bit, and featuring an array of extremely appealing dishes to linger over on a random weekday morning. Everything is good here, but I tend to stick with stuff from the menu’s “breakfast corner,” like the Zorba Plate starring two eggs, grilled halloumi cheese, Greek potatoes, homemade tzatziki, and heirloom tomatoes.
Photo by Scott Lynch
7. Veselka
646 Lorimer Street, at the corner of Meeker Avenue, Williamsburg
Beloved Ukrainian restaurant Veselka has been feeding East Village party people (and just regular locals looking for a bowl of borscht and a platter of perogies) for some 70 years now, but this summer the Birchard family finally brought their legendary varenyky and holubtsi to the County of Kings with a glorious new location in Williamsburg. “One of the most important things to us when designing and building the new place was that, as soon as you walk in, you should feel like you’re at Veselka,” third-generation co-owner Justin Birchard told BKMAG on opening day. And they nailed it. This is a welcome addition to the pantheon of great Brooklyn diners.
Photo by Scott Lynch
8. Bridgeview Diner
9011 Third Avenue, between 90th and 91st Streets, Bay Ridge
What do you feel like eating today? Chicken parm? Waffles? Stuffed grape leaves? Meatloaf sandwich? Broiled brook trout? Chocolate strawberry shortcake? Whatever it is, the 50-year-old Bridgeview Diner in Bay Ridge probably has it somewhere on its staggering, 10-page, 700-plus-item menu. Me? On my last visit I went mainstay and got the bacon cheeseburger deluxe, medium-rare please, which arrived fully loaded and juicy as hell. And the place itself is wild, just an enormous, total throwback space with so many more design details than required. Can a diner be rococo? If so, Bridgeview is it.
Photo by Scott Lynch
9. Cobble Hill Coffee Shop
314 Court Street, between Degraw and Sackett Streets, Carroll Gardens
The family-owned Court Street classic—it used to be called Donut House, a better handle perhaps, especially since even then it didn’t really sell that many donuts and it’s not really in Cobble Hill—features an unsurprising menu of diner favorites and an impressive cast of regulars who, for example, will happily sit here for hours watching old TV shows on their phones. Everything I ever had at Coffee Shop, including last week’s plate of first-rate corned beef hash with sunny side-up eggs and home fries, has needed salt and pepper, but there are shakers of the stuff right there on your table so there’s no need to be sad or live an under-seasoned life.
