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. 

This week, we’re trying not to get too caught up in classification. After all, some of the best meals we had this year came from bars with prestige kitchens, and some of our favorite sips were served at restaurants with objectively awesome cocktail programs. And that begs the question: If the menu hits, who cares what you call it? Today, distinction felt particularly useless with our latest on Little Grand, where a team of Wildair and Hotel Delmano alums is building a devout local following by keeping it simple and seasonal. Then, there’s Bed-Stuy’s Dolores, which has defied any and all categories—except maybe, deservedly, “party”—since opening on Tompkins Avenue over the summer. And, finally, we’re still thinking about last week’s meal at Good Days in the other corner of Williamsburg, which left our writer smitten from the first bite.

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

Little Grand is a Big Hit in East Williamsburg

Little Grand, which opened late this past summer on the corner of Grand and Humboldt, is a welcoming, bistro-vibing bar and restaurant from longtime Williamsburg residents and restaurateurs Michael Smart (also of Hotel Delmano, established 2004) and Claudio Coronas (D.O.C. Wine Bar, since 2001), and clearly they’re doing something right.

By six o’clock last Friday evening, pretty much every seat in the place was filled, servers scurrying about with armloads of espresso martinis and such, chef Salem Williams sending out an appealing array of punchy bar snacks, briny treats from the raw bar, and a few meaty, meal-sized dishes.

It was getting loud for sure—the DJ, who goes on at 8:00 p.m. most nights, hadn’t even started yet—but the volume felt more festive and fun than forced and screamy. It was the kind of scene that you walk into and instantly say, “Ok, yeah, we made a good choice coming here tonight.”

This CDMX-Style Cantina is The Best Party in Brooklyn Right Now

Months before Dolores finally flung open its startlingly green doors on Tompkins Avenue about a week ago, owners Emir Dupeyron and Cressida Greening threw a kind of preview party for the new place out on the sidewalk in front of their other restaurant Winona’s, located over on Flushing. The kitchen that night was basically a small grill, the seating was random and rickety, the menu was limited to a few types of tacos, and it was one of the best meals I’d had all year.

So when I sat down to feast at Dolores proper during its opening weekend, the place packed with giddy locals by 5:00 p.m., my expectations were through the roof. And yet, somehow, the restaurant is even better than I dared hope? Dupeyron, who grew up in Mexico City and has lived for many years now in Bed-Stuy, calls the spot a classic cantina—as much a bar as it is restaurant—and he wants everyone to drink and eat and laugh and linger. Heck, maybe even play some dominoes if you snag one of those four-tops up front with the nifty drink holders.

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, switching up a small detail and bringing in an unexpected ingredient that, without mucking up its core identity, pushes something familiar into new territory.