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 might be exploring. 

The bistro days of summer may (sadly) be behind us, but it would be both dishonest and highly irresponsible to suggest there’s any semblance of seasonality to a sizzling or finely chopped cut of hanger, skirt, or flank at any and all internal temperatures. So, this week we’re putting one up for the frites and geeks ensuring the borough’s steak scene never loses its beefy, reliable cool. First up, Good Days, a new entry in an old(er) part of Williamsburg, where Chef Stephany Burgos serves generous (almost unreasonably so), slabs of skirt alongside piles of golden, gorgeous, fried-to-perfection potatoes. Then there’s the other side of the spectrum: the tartare, with its deliberate, and, of course, delicious calls to traditional French cuisine. Over at Rose Marie, the dish enters damn-near Caesar territory, on a bed of little gems, with capers, anchovies, and grated parm. Finally, for a classic take on steak that requires no learning curve whatsoever, look no further than Badaboom, a new neighborhood favorite keeping crowds pleased (and full) on a quiet corner of Howard Avenue in Bed-Stuy, where the fries come steak-cut and hearty, the meat a rare and righteous bavette served with a side of borderline decadent béarnaise.

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

Good Days is an Irresistible New Gem in South Williamsburg

I fell hard for Good Days with my very first bite.

That’s not entirely true. I actually already liked Good Days before I even walked in, as soon as I clocked that it was in the old Fatty ‘Cue/Loosie Rouge space, on a South 6th Street block that still feels a little like the Williamsburg of yore. “Everybody who lived around here before Covid has a Loosie Rouge story,” Good Days’s co-owner Amanda Norton told Brooklyn Magazine, and she’s not wrong.

And I started crushing hard on the place during a quick walk-through, making my way from the low-ceilinged front room, with its beachy tiled bar, up a couple of steps into the soaring back dining area starring a very rad, very red, faceless portrait, until finally emerging onto a pretty, soon-to-be-winterized back patio, complete with wood-burning stove and fairy lights. Good Days is cozy. It’s cute. It’s filled with homey touches. It’s clearly been created with a whole lot of love.

But it was that first taste of chef and co-owner Stephany Burgos’s cooking, in this case her shrimp cocktail, that really sealed the deal. Like a lot of things on the Good Days menu, the dish may sound like pretty basic comfort food, but Burgos is apparently a genius at switching up a small detail or bringing in an unexpected ingredient that, without mucking up its core identity, pushes something familiar into new territory.

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.

Rose Marie is the couple’s first restaurant in their home borough of Brooklyn (they originally hail from San Antonio, but have lived in the County of Kings for about a decade now), and they bring a pleasingly homey, even old-fashioned, look to the space. White lace curtains hang in the windows. The big front area, where you find the bar and multiple cozy seating possibilities, is decked out in spiffy wallpaper that wouldn’t look out of place in one of the city’s old-money haunts. And the back dining room sports a pair of murals depicting vaguely decadent, bygone-era parties that, Dave said, are kind of an ode to Bemelmans Bar.

Badaboom Brings Classic Bistro Bangers to Bed-Stuy

You can’t miss Badaboom while strolling along Howard Avenue this fall. With its spiffy, bright-blue exterior, elevated outdoor seating, and general open-arms aura, the place stands out for sure in this relatively un-bustling patch of southwest Bed-Stuy.

And you definitely don’t want to miss it, either. Opened in late June by Brooklyn buddies Henry Glucroft and Charles Gerbier, Badaboom is a friendly neighborhood bistro that doubles as a wine bar (or maybe it’s the other way around?) with an easy, appealing menu, and what Glucroft calls “a really interesting reserve list that I’ve been able to help build up over the years.”
If you live nearby and like to eat and/or drink, get ready to be a regular.

Glucroft and Gerbier both have experience keeping people fed, tipsy, and happy. The former runs both Henry’s and Sunrise/Sunset in Bushwick, the latter is responsible for Frog Wine Bar over on Marcus Garvey. But Badaboom, their first operation together as business partners, represents a pretty big step up for them in the restaurant game.