Where to Eat in Brooklyn This Week

By Brooklyn Magazine

Keeping up with the culinary action in Brooklyn is almost futile. Even with our help, there aren’t nearly enough meals or minutes in the day to hit them all, which is why we’ve been trying something new these last few weeks, sending some suggested destinations directly to your inbox, so you always know where to eat no matter which corner of Kings County you find yourself exploring. 

This week, the hits are coming from land, air, and sea. After shuttering late last year, the team behind Carroll Gardens darling Ugly Baby is back with another heater, serving spectacular, spicy, and belly-warming “home-cooked Thai street food” at Hungry Thirsty. If that’s too hot for a late July meal, you can also cool off at one of the borough’s most compelling reasons to spend time at a Bushwick gas station: the elevated-beyond-reason late-night essentials crossing Blue Hour’s counter, which is pumping out halal spins on hot chicken sandwiches and chopped cheese, but also bodega classics like chicken over rice. And finally, something southern, succulent, and summery as hell is going down at Strange Delight in Fort Greene, a concept born of a chance meeting at a nightmarish Shake Shack activation at Coachella that has become one of the best, no-frills, all-thrills seafood spots in town.

See where to eat in Brooklyn this week below, and check back for new picks every Monday.

Photo by Scott Lynch

Beloved Thai Spot Ugly Baby is Reborn, Gloriously, as Hungry Thirsty

Brooklyn lost one of its great restaurants late last December: Sirichai Sreparplarn’s delightful, delirious Ugly Baby, in which the chef celebrated, without apology, the melt-your-face-off fiery food of Northern Thailand. According to server Napat Ruangphung, who goes by Angie, Sreparplarn was happy with the success of Ugly Baby, but was very tired and “just wanted to take a long, long vacation.”

Hell yeah, dude. Definitely feel you there.

Fortunately —miraculously— for the neighborhood, before he left Sreparplarn asked his staff if anyone wanted to take over the lease on the Smith Street space, and Ruangphung and her fellow server Thanatharn Kulaptip, who goes by Sun, pounced on the opportunity. In quick succession, they teamed up with Ugly Baby kitchen worker Prasert “Tee” Kanghae to be the new head chef, slogged their way up through the morass of city permits, and this past weekend, just a little over a month after we all lined up outside for one last meal at Ugly Baby, Hungry Thirsty was born.

Photo by Stephanie Keith

Blue Hour is Serving Elevated Hot Chicken and Chopped Cheese in a Bushwick Gas Station

The next time you’re in Bushwick gassing up your car at the BP station on Myrtle Avenue, you might consider getting a little fuel for yourself, too. Blue Hour is a new late night takeout window serving up halal hot chicken sandwiches, kebabas and chopped cheese smack dab in the middle of the gas station.

It’s Ali Zaman’s first venture outside Astoria and Long Island City, where his family operates Sami’s Kabab House. In 2022, Zaman opened Little Flower Cafe in Queens. Blue Hour was developed with Little Flower partner, his cousin Mohamed Ghiasi, the son of the owner of Dunya Kabab House, an Afghan restaurant in Kensington. When the two opened their elevated fast food restaurant in a Bushwick gas station last month, they were trying to recreate a vibe with a menu that they remembered from growing up in Queens.

“Most of this menu is based around my cousin and I’s experience of eating late night in New York City,” says Ghiasi. Their menu includes all the classics like a smashburger, a hot chicken sandwich, chopped cheese, and shoestring fries, but with an Afghani twist and a few Afghani mainstays. “We’re Afghan so we had to put chicken over rice because this is our staple.”

Photo by Scott Lynch

Strange Delight Brings The “Oyster Disco” Party to Fort Greene 

When we first heard about Strange Delight in 2023, it was being billed as an “oyster disco.” Which: say no more! Instantly sold!

The team — Anoop Pillarisetti, Ham El-Waylly, and Michael Tuiach — has since dropped the “disco” part of tag for their New Orleans-style seafood restaurant that finally opened last weekend on Lafayette. Pillarisetti tells me they feared NYC had been disco-ed out—but there are still plenty of oysters to be sucked down here, as well as one of the best seafood sandwiches available anywhere in town. And as Pillarisetti says, the name Strange Delight itself “captures the energy of eating oysters. And excessive consumption. And fun.” All of which you will almost certainly indulge in here.