The Very Best Meals We Ate in 2025

By Scott Lynch

Editor’s Note: Just for clarity, the “we” here is none other than Scott Lynch, a man driven by a seemingly endless enthusiasm for eating and tracking the action all over the city. Scott has been the backbone, at times the whole skeletal infrastructure, of BKMAG‘s food coverage for years, repping us on and off the field. For that, we could not be more grateful. His word is bond in these pages, and we consider Scott to be about as close to a supreme authority on New York dining as one can hope to find. 

I try to go to at least two or three new restaurants every week, and I usually order like four or five dishes each time, which means, in 2025, I ate…just a ridiculous number of different things all over Brooklyn.

And because there have been so many terrific neighborhood spots opening lately—restaurants at which you’d be happy to eat once a week if you lived around the corner, but are vibey enough to lure in outsiders too—I would say that, with only a few exceptions, almost all of my meals included, at a minimum, one or two winners. That said, some dishes really stood out this year—both in the moment (the porky cochinita pibil turix on the Fourth of July at a totally hopping Dolores) and in memory (I literally still think about the chicken parm I had last May at JR & Son a few times a week).

So here, in rough chronological order, is the best new food I ate in Brooklyn in 2025.

Photo by Scott Lynch

The oxtail sandwich at Coco Bred
Multiple, seasonal locations

Back before 2025’s glorious, glorious summer even started, the good folks at Smorgasburg invited us to their Red Hook headquarters to check out the season’s new vendors, and the food at Jamaican native Jaime Randle’s first-ever food business, Coco Bred, absolutely blew me away. Especially her oxtail sandwich, which is essentially just a bowl of rich, fiery stew stuffed inside a triangle of sweet, pillowy coco bread—a perfect, portable meal. Randle has since set up shop at the Barclays Center during Liberty games and is currently slinging her stuff at the Union Square Holiday Market in Manhattan.

Photo by Scott Lynch

The chicken parm at JR & Son
575 Lorimer St.

You know what’s fun as hell? Hanging with a crew at JR & Son, the revamp of a long-time social club/dive bar as an old school Italian restaurant, from the same team that turned Kellogg’s Diner into my favorite new restaurant of 2024. But with a twist! Namely, chef Patricia Vega, formerly of Thai Diner, now banging out beauties like cacio e pepe, a killer burger, and, the biggest must on the menu, a ridiculously thick, outrageously good, almost recklessly spicy chicken parm. This is one of Brooklyn’s best, most delicious hangout spots.

Photo by Scott Lynch

The Bistro Smash at Disco Birdies
355 Franklin Ave.

Matt Diaz operates four terrific food-and-alcohol joints on a single Bed-Stuy block (Franklin between Greene and Lexington), but only one of them, the awesomely-named Disco Birdies, offers a burger on the menu. And what a burger it is! Diaz’s double-patty Bistro Smash is a glorious, mustard-infused mess that hits the table oozing orange sauce, the whole thing a zingy delight. The fried chicken stuff is really good here too, plus you can get a bottle of champagne and/or caviar-topped fries if you’re feeling fancy.

Photo by Scott Lynch

The salted caramel sundae with a chocolate shell at Birdee
316 Kent Ave.

Deeply embedded within the whole weird (but surprisingly pleasant!) Domino refinery complex on the Williamsburg waterfront, chef Renata Ameni’s outstanding all-day cafe Birdee is not only one of the borough’s best bakeries, but there’s also usually no long line to contend with. And, most welcome, during warmer months, there’s a full menu of amazing ice cream sundaes to enjoy out in the plaza. Ameni’s pistachio cherry sundae with crunchy kataifi is a wonderful, tangy treat, but my favorite of the bunch features lots of sticky salted caramel and a crackling dark chocolate shell.

Photo by Scott Lynch

The cochinita pibil turix at Dolores
397 Tompkins Ave.

I’m not usually a big Fourth-of-July guy, but last summer the night was pretty exceptional: A rooftop party in Crown Heights surrounded by rogue fireworks and lots of friends, preceded by an even better party at the then-newly-opened Dolores in Bed-Stuy. We stuffed ourselves silly back then, and it was all delicious. But the one dish that’s lingered longest in my memory is the cochinita pibil turix, a trio of rolled tortillas plump with chunks of braised pork, infused with achiote and citrus, the whole thing sodden with zippy habanero sauce. You’ll probably have to wait for a table when you get here, but it’s totally worth it. This remains the borough’s best and most consistent bashment of 2025.

Photo by Scott Lynch

The bone-in pork chop at Bong
724 Sterling Pl.

Bong has received more raves and accolades than any opening in recent memory, and, frankly, everything everyone says about the place is true. Chakriya “Cha” Un and Alexander “Chapi” Chaparro’s sweet little Cambodian restaurant is without a doubt the coolest, most delicious, most revolutionary spot to hit Kings County in a long time. Also true? The pork chop here rules. I mean, everything is great—the lobster, the crispy whole fish, the clams, all superb. Un’s bone-in pork chop, however, is a pig dish for the ages: Fatty, sweet, juicy, hefty, and covered in a chunky tuk trey ping poh, or fish and tomato sauce. Now if we could only get a reservation to eat here again…

Photo by Scott Lynch

Roasted chicken at Badaboom
421 Bainbridge St.

Is Badaboom the perfect neighborhood spot? Maybe! It’s chill, it’s welcoming, it’s useful for lots of different occasions, and it has a tight menu of bistro crowd-pleasers. Opened by Brooklyn buddies Henry Glucroft and Charles Gerbier over the summer, the bright-blue facade certainly grabs your attention out here on the eastern edge of Bed-Stuy, but it’s the food that’s tempting the locals to return again and again. And the foundation of it all is the roasted chicken, cooked to a glisten in the big rotisserie oven up front and plopped onto your table with so much juice, most of which gets sopped up by a mound of charred potatoes. Just a wonderfully soul-satisfying plate of food.

Photo by Scott Lynch

The spare ribs at Johnny’s
642 Lorimer St.

Or, wait, maybe it’s actually Johnny’s? Opened this summer in Williamsburg, on the increasingly happening western side of the BQE, the Tang family’s friendly and stylish place specializes in Chinese-Peruvian—or “Chifa”—classics like rotisserie chicken with (fantastic) yuca fries, tender, juicy, heavily-seasoned (also fantastic) lomo saltado, and a platter of juicy, sweet, and (most fantastic of all) funky spare ribs. Add Tang’s excellent aji verde to any and all of the above for maximum pleasure.

The Lucian green fig salad at TriniJam
9501 Flatlands Ave.

Another exceptionally pleasant day in a summer that seemed overly-generous with them was when we rode the L to the end of the line in Canarsie to check out the incredible Caribbean comfort-food spot TriniJam. Open since 2020, the place is run by Calvin and Latoya Sennon, who’ve lived in the neighborhood for more than 30 years and celebrate their heritage (he’s Trinidadian, she’s Jamaican) here with the likes of goat curry, jerk chicken, and, the surprising showstopper of our feast, the Lucian green fig salad, a pile of sliced green banana tossed with shredded bits of codfish, pickled onions and peppers, and a bunch of different herbs. It’s refreshing, hearty, and peppy as hell, all at the same time.

Photo by Scott Lynch

The lonche bańado at Macario
463 Fourth Ave.

It’s extremely rare to encounter a type of sandwich in the wild that I’ve never tried nor even ever heard of before, but that was the case one fortunate evening this fall when I stepped into Macario in Park Slope and ordered a lonche bañado. And I was not prepared for how amazing and freakishly messy this Guadalajara beauty was—just a warm, saucy, spicy, intensely porkly beast of a sandwich. There is a secret technique for eating these things with dignity and grace, involving three fingers and one spoon, but until you get the hang of it, know that you’re going to go through a lot of napkins.

Photo by Scott Lynch

Shrimp cocktail with burnt onion dijonnaise at Good Days
91 South 6th St.

Maybe the most delightful surprise of the year was my many-course dinner at Good Days, Amanda Norton and chef Stephany Burgos’s homey, quirky, irresistible new restaurant in the old Loosie Rouge space. There’s so much good stuff here, but it was my first bite that really sent me swooning, a plump, poached shrimp dipped in Burgos’s burnt onion dijonnaise sauce, the pungent earthiness of the dip a shockingly good match for the sweet brininess of the crustacean. I love everything about this place.

Photo by Scott Lynch

Crispy hake at Golden Ratio
216 Greene Ave.

The concept of the spanking new spot from the Place des Fetes et al team is really cool: It’s a cocktail bar that uses the “leftovers” from their other restaurants (in addition to PdF, they also run Café Mado and Laurel Bakery) to create utterly unique zero-waste drinks that you can get either with or without booze. For example, the “Parsnip” cocktail can be had with gin and natural sugars, or with lemon and pine. Adding to the pleasure is a short food menu with gems like anchovy and bonito butter toast, smoked sunchoke profiteroles, and the crispy hake, pound-for-pound the best slab of deep-fried fish I’ve ever had in my life, which comes with a heavenly garlic aioli. It’s magic at every level, the soft and creamy fish and the well-seasoned shell, so delightfully crunchy. Excellent for date night, catch-up-with-a-bestie night, or, really, any night at all.