Barbuto
CITY GUIDES | NEW YORK CITY
Brooklyn’s Best New Restaurants, From Dumbo to Fort Greene
These are the borough’s most exciting recent openings: chef-driven counters, wine-bar dinners, and neighborhood hits.
By Maria Rodriguez | Dec. 29, 2025
AUTHOR BIO: With a day job that requires constant travel, Maria Rodriguez is likely a regular at your favorite restaurant. She’s reviewed restaurants since 2007 in magazines from Barcelona to Bakersfield.
I did not grow up in Brooklyn, which means I spent years doing the classic Manhattan thing: treating the borough like a place you “go” rather than a place that sets the pace. Then Brooklyn kept opening restaurants that made my side of the river look predictable, and I had to sheepishly admit what everyone else already knew: Brooklyn’s food scene is among the best in the city.
So now I track Brooklyn openings with the same vigilance I reserve for Manhattan: who’s behind the place, what’s actually on the menu, and whether the hype is coming from the food or just the photos. The list shifts constantly, because Brooklyn changes quickly and New York rewards the places that keep delivering.
These are my 12 favorite new Brooklyn spots right now—the ones I’d send you to first if you wanted to understand what the borough tastes like today.
ABC Kitchens
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Jean-Georges Vongerichten took his ABC Kitchen/Cocina/ABCV universe and dropped it into Dumbo, which means you can order dosas, crab toast, and empanadas without changing restaurants. The menu reads like a greatest-hits tour with new riffs, including tomato toast with tuna tartare and baked sweet potatoes with chile butter. It’s a big room that still tries to feel like a neighborhood spot, right down to the kind of people who look like they “just popped in” after spending two hours refreshing Resy.
Best for: When your group cannot agree on one cuisine
Barker Cafeteria
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Barker Cafeteria is what happens when people with serious fine-dining résumés decide the thing New York actually needs is an elite sandwich shop. Gracie Gardner and Henry Wright built the menu around focaccia (roast beef with lemony horseradish cream and fried jicama sticks is the kind of detail that tips it from “lunch” into “event”), plus pastries like currant scones with clotted cream and jam. The vibe is casual, but the food is calibrated like someone is still quietly competing for a star.
Best for: A lunch that turns into a long hang
Barbuto
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Jonathan Waxman’s Barbuto has landed inside 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge, and it still knows exactly what it is: roast chicken, pastas, and the kind of vegetable-forward plates that make you feel briefly responsible. The menu keeps the classics in rotation and adds a few “Brooklyn” gestures, like Pizza Brooklyn with Acme smoked salmon, avocado, crème fraîche, and caviar. It’s big, polished, and built for a dinner that starts as “we’ll just grab something” and ends with dessert and a second bottle.
Best for: A grown-up dinner that still feels easy
Bong
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Bong is a small, buzzing Cambodian spot in Crown Heights from Chakriya Un and Alexander Chaparro, and it feels like a place that got popular because the food earned it, not because the lighting did. Some of the best dishes push you toward eating with your hands, including occasional lobster, whole fish, and wings that make you forget you ever pretended to be dainty in public. It’s intimate, energetic, and the kind of spot where you look up mid-bite and realize you’ve been smiling like an idiot.
Best for: A lively dinner where the table actually shares
Dolores
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Dolores nails the “we’re a bar but also a restaurant” balancing act, which is why it’s busy on random weeknights in Bed-Stuy. The drinks lean Mexico City playful (yes, there are strawberries in the michelada), and the food delivers punchy snacks you can build a night around, including refried beans so cheesy they basically qualify as queso. It’s the kind of room that makes you order one more thing because everyone else is doing it and you do not want to be the weak link.
Best for: Cocktails and snacks that turn into dinner
Falansai
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Falansai’s new Greenpoint era keeps the restaurant’s Vietnamese-Mexican brain intact, but the format is looser and more “wine bar you accidentally spend three hours in.” Chef Eric Tran’s menu mixes returning favorites with a lot of new dishes, and the whole thing is designed for grazing rather than a formal appetizer-entrée march. It’s the rare “new” place that already feels like it has regulars, which is usually the tell.
Best for: A date that starts casual and stays that way
I Cavallini
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I Cavallini is the Four Horsemen team’s Italian sibling, and it comes with the kind of confidence you only get from people who already know the city is going to show up. Chef Nick Curtola’s menu swings from fried eel toast to housemade pastas like bucatini with tomatoes and ricotta salata, plus a deep Italian wine list that’s clearly not here to play small. The room looks like a cool friend’s apartment where the friend also happens to feed you amaro and tiramisu.
Best for: Dinner that turns into a late-night wine situation
Il Leone
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Chris Wexler-Waite brought his Portland, Maine, pizza shrine to Park Slope, with ingredient sourcing that borders on reverent. The Margherita Del Leone is the move here (greenhouse cherry tomatoes, mozzarella di bufala, basil snipped from a plant above the pizza station), and the Isola lobster pie is the one you order when you want the table to go quiet for a minute. It’s blond wood, candlelight, and just enough romance to justify a second bottle from a wine list that stays surprisingly approachable.
Best for: A pizza date that feels like a real night out
JR and Son
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JR and Son is back in Williamsburg, leaning into the thing New York always comes back to: good bottles, small bites, half-pound burgers on Tuesdays, and a space that makes you want to stay. It’s the sort of place that works whether you came for one drink or you’re building an entire evening around hanging at the bar. The appeal is simple and very Brooklyn: it feels like a neighborhood spot, even when it’s packed.
Best for: A spot where the bar snacks and drinks are equally good
Los Burritos Juárez
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Chef-owner Alan Delgado’s Fort Greene counter that treats the tortilla like the main character, with handmade flour tortillas that make most burritos in this city feel like they’re wrapped in cardboard. The menu stays tight, with burritos built around fillings like chorizo, rajas, and other Northern Mexico staples that do not need a lot of explanation once you’re holding one. It’s fast, focused, and dangerous if you live nearby because “I’ll just grab one” becomes a weekly ritual.
Best for: A burrito you plan your day around
Lucky Charlie
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Lucky Charlie is a new Williamsburg bar built for the nights when you want something unfussy but still worth leaving the apartment for. It’s the kind of place where the drinks come fast, the room stays loud in a happy way, and you can actually pull off an impromptu meet-up without turning it into a logistics project. If you have been saying “we should hang soon,” this is your solution.
Best for: A last-minute group meet-up
Rose Marie
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Rose Marie is the Williamsburg bar from Krystiana and Dave Rizo (the Yellow Rose team), and it’s designed as an any-night hang. Order the patty melt on thick Pullman bread with pickled green tomatoes, then keep going with something like the saltine-crusted cod with curried sweet potatoes and whatever vegetable happens to look best that day. The room is cozy without being too cute, and it’s a rare place that works for a date, a parent visit, or a “we need fries and a martini” emergency.
Best for: A weeknight dinner that feels like a reward
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