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. 

Coming out of one of the soggiest Memorial Day weekends in recent memory, we’re looking for quick, powerful fixes and flavors that don’t require a schlep, a reservation, or bearing the painful crawl of a line wrapped around two blocks of a neighborhood you only visit when intending to eat for sport.

The spark for this week’s recommendations comes from Tavern Next Door, the latest expansion of Billy Durney’s Red Hook Tavern dynasty, which, as the name suggests, shares a wall and a kitchen with the institutional bistro and its fabled status burger, but, for now, not the crunch for bookings nor the sanity-testing wait times for walk-ins. Think of it more as a dark, moody sister spot with a stellar menu and cocktail program than a convenient overflow space, inspired by Durney’s hazy, late-night creativity and “an exorbitant amount of green chartreuse.” On the other side of town, there’s Rogers Burgers in Flatbush, where a Haitian couple is loading sliders, doubles, chicken sandos, fries, and wings with quality ingredients and Creole touches, and all at a very reasonable price point. Finally, we head up to Nowon in Bushwick, where smashburgers get punched up with piles of fiery kimchi and served as a beautiful, sloppy masterpiece. And if you need a few more suggestions, we’ve got you covered.

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

Photo by Scott Lynch

Red Hook Tavern Opens a Dark, Moody Cocktail Bar with The Best Burger in Town

Let’s get this out of the way quick and early: Billy Durney’s brand new cocktail bar Tavern Next Door serves the exact same burger—huge, juicy, dry-aged, beefy, blanketed with melted American, bottomed with a thick slice of onion—as his famously line-plagued Red Hook Tavern, which is located, as the name of the new spot suggests, right next door.

In fact, the two places share the same kitchen, so precisely the same people will cook your burger (a non-negotiable medium-rare, obviously), no matter which side of the wall you’re sitting on. And as of last Tuesday, when my buddy Mike and I sidled into our comfy banquette at Tavern Next Door, we were surrounded by multiple empty seats even as the usual line ran down the block at the OG Tavern.

You may have read elsewhere that the Tavern Next Door version of the fabled burger is actually a pair of sliders, but that’s no longer true. According to Conor Johns, the bar director here, the sliders were more of a “friends and family” early experiment and have since been 86ed. Everyone at both establishments now gets the same cheeseburger.

So that’s the burger part of this story, but there’s a lot of other awesome stuff going on here too. At its core, Tavern Next Door is, as Durney put it, “a sexy cocktail bar,” the vibe based on what he called “one of the great nights of my whole life,” at a dark, moody spot in Paris almost 20 years ago, during which, among other things, he said he drank “an exorbitant amount of green chartreuse.”

Courtesy of Rogers Burgers

This Haitian Couple Wants Rogers Burgers to Be a Flatbush Staple

On a humid March evening, strolling down Rogers Avenue looking for a place to conduct our interview, Haiti-born couple Josue Pierre and Jonathan Pierre-Lafleur greet a gangly preteen. Josue recites the boy’s customary order from memory. “Two bacon cheeseburgers, a Burger Créole, and two Sprites,” the 43-year-old says without a moment’s pause. It’s a lot for a little kid, but Josue says the boy orders for himself and his family. He’s been doing so since around the time their restaurant, Rogers Burgers, opened last July in Flatbush. “You’re literally watching these kids grow,” Josue tells me.

Rogers Burgers has been growing, too. Located on a quiet strip on its namesake avenue, the Caribbean burger spot has already earned enough acclaim to be covered by The New York Times, and judging by the small boy and the 20-something that says what’s up to Josue and Jonathan, the locals also seem to know them pretty well. The shop carries all the aesthetic cues of a traditional Mom-&-Pop, its name painted in royal blue lettering on a white banner hovering above the entrance. Inside, there’s a small counter and about five seats. If it’s not too crowded, you can eat there, but the grub comes fast enough to qualify as another one of the neighborhood’s incomparable takeout options. “It’s very Flatbush,” Josue says, nodding to the menu’s Caribbean DNA.

Photo by Scott Lynch

The Mighty Nowon Brings Kimchi Burgers and Buldak Pizza to Bushwick

Jae Lee is no stranger to feeding people in a party zone. In 2019, as part of a popup series called Him (it means “strength” in Korean), Lee set up shop in the kitchen of the now-defunct East Village Speed Tribes biker bar Black Emperor, slinging an improbable but crazy delicious array of Korean-flavored American classics like kimchi burgers and honey butter tater tots. It proved to be a winning formula, and later that year Lee opened his own restaurant down on Sixth Street off Avenue A, in the heart of the neighborhood’s nightlife scene, called Nowon, named after the town he grew up in outside of Seoul. The pandemic upended everything shortly thereafter, of course, but, thankfully, Nowon survived, then thrived, and last week Lee opened a second Nowon in Bushwick, right by the Jefferson L stop.

“I lived with my brother in Bushwick for a few years, and I love the neighborhood,” Lee tells Brooklyn Magazine. “The street art, the art crowd, the nightlife, the interesting people, the energy. The culture here is pretty unique, even for New York City.”

The new Nowon is cool-looking and fun, with a small bar and lounge-y area up front and seating for about 60 in the main dining room. There’s a disco ball and DJ booth, and Lee promises that there’ll be late-night karaoke here in the near future.