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. 

It is now well-established in our pages that “ramen weather” is an inane, industry-killing construct. But the same cannot be responsibly said about the broader category of noodles, and all the slippery, saucy, brothy, and beautiful forms they take this time of year, or any. So, this week, we’re zooming out a bit to see if there is, in fact, a natural fit for this particular season of long, stringy carb consumption (or if we’re just, more likely, overthinking it).

The seed for this was planted by our latest, a new-ish arrival on Vanderbilt, where SSRP, is slinging, yes, ramen, out of the old Chuko space in Prospect Heights. We stopped by to get a sense of how they’re getting acclimated, as their predecessor eyes a space nearby for its revival.

From there, we head to Uzuki in Greenpoint, where the noodle specialization is soba, and the prices aren’t exactly blue collar, but the vibe remains pretty stellar for those seeking something a little celebratory.

And finally, we slip out to Bushwick for one of the few seats available at the small but mighty GiGi Curry and Noodle Shop, where the blockbuster, signature curry noodles can be stacked aside a mound of hacked-up chicharron, and the udon gets a proper punch from a spicy beef broth.

If those prove, somehow, inadequate or off-pitch, please refer to our summer ramen list for many further considerations.

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

Photo by Scott Lynch

SSRP Rescues The Ramen Supply on Vanderbilt

Well, that didn’t take long. Thank god. It was only last August when Prospect Heights noodle institution Chuko announced it was dunzo after 15 years at the base of Vanderbilt Avenue. And now, less than three months later, with its former tenants teasing their new location, the corner spot has flung open its door again, with a new team at the helm, a spruced-up design, and a menu that features, you guessed it, big bowls of first-rate ramen. Welcome to the neighborhood, SSRP.

SSRP, a semi-acronym for “Slurp, Sip, Repeat,” is run by the people behind such neighborhood winners as Sukh, Nourish, and Ozakaya (which, to its credit, does have a few ramen dishes on offer), the former in Fort Greene, and the latter two just a few blocks from the new place on Vanderbilt. And though SSRP’s co-owners TK and Patama are from Thailand—as is the chef, who goes by Tyler—they all share a passion for Japanese ramen made right. “We make the ramen special, in our style,” TK told Brooklyn Magazine. “We call it ‘Japanese ingredients through a Brooklyn lens.’”

Photo by Scott Lynch

Uzuki is Serving Up Staggeringly Good Noodles in Greenpoint

Shuichi Kotani discovered his passion for soba while emerging from a dark place. At just 19, he watched on, feeling helpless, as his mom died of breast cancer.

“After that I had no motivation,” he says. “I wanted to die. I was drinking every day, living off of ramen and fried chicken, emotions out of control, high cholesterol, always sleepy, everything upside down. Little by little I realized I had to change something.”

The spark for that change came from an unlikely source: a 75-year-old sensei, successful businessman and soba master who extolled the physical and mental health benefits of the thin, nutty, buckwheat noodles to young Kotani. “Japanese style soba is very tough to learn,” he says. “I spent the first three years just cleaning the restaurant!”

Today, Kotani is a soba master in own right, and, after many years spent cooking in Tokyo, and several more consulting here in the city, he’s opened Uzuki, a very cool and serene space that sits adjacent to his business partner Aki Miyazono’s design studio Blank.

As you would expect, the menu at Uzuki is dominated by bowls of soba, all made entirely from buckwheat, and thus all 100 percent gluten-free. What might surprise soba purists is the stuff Kotani adds to his noodles.

The showstopper dish, for example, is the sashimi soba, a combination you’d be hard pressed to find anywhere else in town. The base here is a tangle of green, matcha-infused cold noodles floating around a rich dashi broth with a deluxe-platter’s worth of raw fish thrown in, including scallops, salmon, sweet shrimp, yellowtail and uni. You will be the envy of everyone around you when this hits the table.

Photo by Scott Lynch

A Small, But Mighty, Curry and Noodle Shop Comes to Bushwick

It feels like a ton of really good Southeast Asian restaurants have opened in Brooklyn lately, from the Malaysian Kelang in Greenpoint to the Khmer Bong in Crown Heights (and upcoming Hōp in Red Hook) to the Thai trio of Hungry Thirsty in Carroll Gardens, Ler Lers in Bed-Stuy, and They Say That in Bushwick—and that’s by no means a complete list.

What we haven’t seen around these parts in a while is a new, cool, contemporary counter-service Southeast Asian noodle spot where you can pop in anytime, hang out for a minute or two, and slurp down a bowl of something comforting, satisfying, and delicious.

Nicha Pattaranuwit, a Bangkok native who’s lived in Brooklyn for 13 years, noticed the same thing. “I’m a noodle lover,” she told Brooklyn Magazine. “And I couldn’t really find something fun and casual, a Thai place you could go to every day. Like street food, but maybe you sit at a table outside, and say hi to your friends and neighbors as they walk by.”

And so a couple of weeks ago, Pattaranuwit helped fill our noodle void with her first-ever restaurant, the super-cute GiGi Curry and Noodle Bar. The cozy shop, located just off a bustling stretch of Myrtle, features a half-dozen stools inside, a couple of tables outside (one currently set up within the temporary winter vestibule, a perfect perch on that recent, not miserably freezing day), and an impressively wide-ranging menu.