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 revisiting the question of “ramen weather,” which has surely now categorically arrived (regardless of whether you actually believe in the premise), because, my god, is there depth and breadth to the broths getting boiled up across the borough. And, with a Nor’easter washing over the tristate area these last and next few days—not to mention that inevitable stretch of fall when it just rains for a week or two straight—we figured it was due time to run back through some of the many great and deeply gratifying bowls we’ve come across as of late. Take, for instance, the spectacular slurps at Unoriginal Noodle, where Malcolm Ting, a former Meat Hook butcher, is knocking it out of the park with a tight pan-Asian menu, starring a simple and brilliant tonkotsu. Next up, Chef Irene Yoo’s Orion Bar in Bushwick, which is serving Shin ramyun in a literal pot with hunks of brisket and a decadent, delightful, and dank drizzle of truffle oil. And, finally, since this season is really just about consuming as many strands and strains of noodle and stock combinations as humanly possible, we’re including Uzuki, the Greenpoint outpost of Shuichi Kotani, a certified soba master, whose duck shio prepares the fowl three ways and serves it in a bright, lively broth.

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

(Photo by Scott Lynch)

Unoriginal Noodles Opens in The Former Lot 2 Space on Sixth Avenue

There’s not a ton of stuff going on down here at the southern end of Sixth Avenue, an area some call South Slope, and others Greenwood Heights. Not that the residents seem to mind — part of the appeal of this stretch of Brooklyn is the slow pace and quiet streets — but when one of the scattered local restaurants close, it leaves a hole.

That was the case when cozy, farm-to-table spot Lot 2 shut down in 2022 after a good 13-year run. So when Malcolm Ting opened his first-ever restaurant, Unoriginal Noodles and Bar, in the space, he was a little anxious. “It’s a big moment for me,” Ting tells BKMAG. “My last job was as a butcher at the Meat Hook, and now I’m back in the kitchen after three or four years. I’m nervous. I’m excited. I wanted to open a place that I would want to eat in, and this is it.”

(Photo by Scott Lynch)

Orion Bar Brings Korean Drinking Culture to Bushwick

Chef Irene Yoo has been publicly hyping her love of Korean drinking culture since at least 2013, when she and her husband and partner Nick Dodge launched a series of popup dinner (and drinking) parties called Yoo Eating. When she moved it all online during the early pandemic (think: YooTube cooking videos), Yoo’s infectious enthusiasm for Korean comfort food — and the booze that goes with it — brought her even more attention. So she and Dodge decided it was time to give this thing a permanent home where we could all gather together and eat and drink and get happy on a regular basis.

Welcome Orion Bar, the couple’s brand new restaurant and bar located in the former Le Garage space on Suydam Street in Bushwick. “In Korean culture, eating and drinking are one and the same,” Yoo tells BKMAG. “When you go out drinking, you’re always eating. So we wanted to open a place where you get really nice cocktails and bottles of soju, or you could get down with a beer and a shot, or broth backs, or weird infusions, but also make sure you’re also getting fed alongside the drinks with some great comfort food.”

(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 his 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.