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. 

Well, we’ve finally reached the point in the year when checking the calendar offers more seasonal confusion than certainty. It is currently—checks notes—about 85 degrees, and the Summer preview appears to have few more days of runtime before we hit an appropriately damp stretch of Spring. But while the heat is with us, and offering an early taste of what’s to come, we’re embracing the simulation and dedicating this week’s recs to the spots singing the siren song of Summer. Namely, all the fantastic strains and preparations of seafood you should seek out in the months ahead.

First up is our latest on Bar Susanne, an elegant new spot on the Williamsburg waterfront from the mastermind behind Kellogg’s Diner’s brilliant Tex-Mex overhaul and the late Nura, offering crucial crustaceans pulled from bays and coastlines all over New York. From there, we’re heading back down to Bay Ridge for another round of the stunningly rare (in these parts, at least) pick-your-fish adventure at Port Sa’id, where all manner of swimmers are welcome, celebrated, and prepared to your preference. And finally, we pull up to Strange Delight in Fort Greene for a New Orleans-inspired “oyster disco,” with bivalves that come fried, charbroiled, and/or raw, and a “shrimp loaf” sandwich that’s just a beautiful, messy beast of a meal, served on milk bread and slathered with Duke’s and a mighty helping of giardiniera.

See where to eat this week in Brooklyn below.

Photo by Scott Lynch

Bar Susanne is a New Winner on The Williamsburg Waterfront

There are few spots in Brooklyn more pleasant on a nice summer evening than that southern end of Domino Park, where there’s always a nice breeze, the Williamsburg Bridge towers dramatically above, and the views looking out over the water are simply spectacular.

Adding to the list of waterfront attractions is Chef Jackie Carnesi—the mastermind behind Nura (RIP) and Kellogg’s Diner‘s brilliant Tex-Mex overhaul—who just opened the beautiful new spot Bar Susanne along the East River, and is loading the menu with delicious seafood. “After doing Kellogg’s for two years, I wanted to get back more into a traditional kitchen,” Carnesi told Brooklyn Magazine. “And something that’s not open 24 hours. Plus, I’m really excited about this spot because it feels so New York. Not just because of the views and all that, but also because we’re really highlighting local seafood.”

Said local seafood greets you as you walk in the door, a glorious cascade of mollusks, cephalopods, and crustaceans; fodder for the chef’s raw bar offerings. This includes oysters, of course, which are served straight-up on a half shell—there were three varieties on hand when we went last week—but most dishes come with an extra bit of that Carnesi magic.

Photo by Scott Lynch

Brooklyn Finally Gets a Great “Pick-Your-Fish” Restaurant

The concept of the Pick-Your-Own-Seafood restaurant, exemplified by Queens legends like Astoria Seafood and AbuQir, is so simple and fun and genuinely transportive (“it feels like we’re on vacation!!”) that it’s kind of wild that they haven’t popped up all over the city. In fact, until just recently, there were approximately zero of these things in this big, beautiful borough.

Adam Kohlani—born in Yemen, married to an Egyptian, a Bay Ridger for almost 14 years now—thought the absence was borderline tragic. And so, at the start of the summer, he opened Port Sa’id Seafood, a casual and welcoming spot celebrating all manner of swimmers on Third Avenue just off Bay Ridge Avenue.

If you’ve never been to one of these sorts of places, here’s how Port Sa’id works. The core of the “menu” is a case of raw seafood located in the back room of the restaurant. On display, lolling on ice, are whole fish like branzino, sardines, and red snappers, as well as mollusks, crustaceans, and cephalopods like squid, scallops, and shrimps. You point at what you want, tell the counter person how you’d like it prepared, and about 15 minutes later, lovely plates of screamingly fresh seafood start hitting your table.

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.

Backing up a bit, the seed for Strange Delight was planted way back in 2018, when Pillarisetti and Tuiach met at Coachella, at a Shake Shack activation, of all places. “It was a traumatic and tense experience,” said Pillarisetti, “and a friendship was forged.” Pillarisetti grew up in Alexandria, Louisiana, about three hours from New Orleans, and right from the start they knew they wanted to do something that captured the spirit, and the flavors, of the Big Easy.

The dream came closer to reality when they met chef El-Waylly, who was raised in Qatar (which, coincidently, also has rich oyster culture: Before natural gas was discovered, pearl-diving was the country’s “main source of income,” as he put it). Among his other credentials, El-Waylly has worked at Momofuku’s delivery-service Ando. After signing the lease last summer on this space in Fort Greene, “the three of us went to New Orleans together and ate a crazy amount of food in four days in the middle of July,” says Pillarisetti. “Chugging water, looking for salad, crushing oysters.”