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, a good hang is damn-near all you need. Whether it’s something cozy and decadent with a menu to match at the newly opened Rose Marie in East Williamsburg, a punchy and opulent showcase of rarely spotted Fujian foods at Nin Hao in Prospect Heights, or the late-night/early-bird spot to rule them all at the revamped Kellogg’s Diner by the Metropolitan Ave stop—our latest picks are best paired with a couple of cocktails and a tight-knit crew (but work just fine for date night or treating yourself to a solo meal).

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

(Photo by Scott Lynch)

Rose Marie is a Terrific New Neighborhood Hang in East Williamsburg

The first thing to note about Rose Marie, a lively, comfortable bar and restaurant that recently opened on Lorimer Street, is that there are no tacos on the menu. Which, true, is not an unusual occurrence for any given restaurant, but I say that because Dave and Krystiana Rizo, the couple running Rose Marie, have spent the last five years cranking out some of the best tacos in town at Yellow Rose, their Tex-Mex hotspot in the East Village.

“There were a lot of specials I was running at Yellow Rose that would get traction on social media, but then people would come in and just stick with the tacos and margaritas, which is totally what they should be doing! But over the years, I kind of wrote a whole menu that had nothing to do with the Yellow Rose concept. So we found this place for all of that,” Chef Dave explains.

(Photo by Scott Lynch)

Fujianese Cuisine Takes Center Stage at This Prospect Heights Stunner

Evan Toretto Li was born in Fujian, on the coast of southeast China, and spent much of his first 18 years bouncing between there and Hunan, which is slightly more inland. When he moved to Brooklyn with his family in 2006, two things surprised him: that “the vast majority” of Sunset Park residents were also Fujianese and, even though so many of his new neighbors worked in restaurants, how difficult it was to find real Fujian food in his adopted city.

“Fujian food and culture was barely represented,” Li tells Brooklyn Magazine. “Chinese food is more than just Cantonese, Shanghainese, and Sichuan! But no one was representing that.”

To be fair to all those un-representers, Li’s first restaurant in New York City was the “neo-Sichuanese” dry pot hit MáLà Project, which he founded with Meng Ai and Yishu He. Li also has done time at Tim Ho Wan (specializing in Hong Kong-style dim sum), and the Sichuan-Cantonese spot (with Shanghainese decor) Cafe China. But Li’s dream, always, was to open his own place, where he could showcase the Fujianese dishes he grew up on.

(Photo by Scott Lynch)

A Star is Reborn: Kellogg’s Diner is Revamped as a Tex-Mex Triumph

The most amazing thing happened at Gov Ball in summer 2024. All weekend long, the festival grounds were buzzing about Chappell Roan, who wasn’t slated to go on until the final hours of the final day. It’s all anyone wanted to talk about. And when she finally hit the stage late Sunday afternoon, the biggest single crowd I’ve ever seen was there to greet her, tens of thousands of people in pink cowboy hats stretching back farther than I could see. And Roan? She nailed it. It was like watching a star being born in real time. The people went nuts.

I thought of all this the other night at my first of what will be many, many meals at the newly reopened, lovingly revitalized Kellogg’s Diner, a landmark Williamsburg restaurant that’s been holding it down on the corner of Metropolitan and Union Avenues for nearly a century. Everyone I know had been buzzing about this opening for almost a year, ever since we first heard that the brilliant and inimitable Jackie Carnesi, whose most recent cheffy triumph was the great Nura in Greenpoint, was put in charge of the kitchen after restaurateur Louis Skibar rescued the place from the wrecking ball.