Photo illustration by Johansen Peralta
The man who ate Brooklyn
Brooklyn Magazine contributor Scott Lynch discusses the best food of 2023 and what he's looking forward to in '24
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Last week, I was looking through our analytics to compile a list of our most-read stories of 2023, as one does when one has an insatiable content hole to fill every day. As it turns out, seven of our 20 most-read stories of the year — a third of our most popular articles — were written and photographed by our insanely prolific contributor Scott Lynch.
Lynch covers food for us, mostly. Restaurant opening and pop-ups. He also shoots highly photogenic events like the Coney Island Polar Bear Plunge. He covers Bike Kill, the Great Pupkin, Governors Ball and Idiotarod, among others. He wrote our roundup of the best 12 new restaurants of 2023, and he recently launched our new monthly-ish column, Quick Bites, a roundup of local eatery news.
And today, we’re going to talk about all of that. We discuss his favorite dining moments of 2023, food trends he likes, food trends he is tired of, plus what to look forward to in 2024.
The following is a transcript of our conversation, which airs as an episode of “Brooklyn Magazine: The Podcast,” edited for clarity. Listen in the player above or wherever you get your podcasts.
Most awards show save the biggest for the last, but let’s get right into it. What was your top meal in the borough for 2023?
Wow, top meal? So, I was invited to Ilis.
Mads Refslund.
Yeah, yeah. Mads Refslund. So, he’s one of the most famous chefs in the world, basically, and he opened this insane point in Greenpoint, of all places. A million other places opened in Greenpoint this year. But it was just crazy. He just is this incredibly creative guy who puts clam juice inside of clams, makes them into a flask that you drink at the table, and it was all just over-the-top and spectacular and crazy and delicious. It cost $295 a person to go here on a regular day, and I was invited to the friends and family, so that was really nice.
My invite was lost in the mail. It went to spam, I guess.
[Laujghs.] I guess so. That was really spectacular. I would just say if you ever get the opportunity to go there, just do it. Just take it. It’s really incredible.
And this is the chef behind Noma.
So, he was one of the co-founders, but he will be quick to say he was only there for less than a year, and then kind of moved on. But he’s always associated with that because that’s often called the world’s best restaurant.
Or it was. It’s closed, right?
Closing soon.
Two weeks ago, we ran your list of the 12 best new restaurants in the borough this year. I’ve been watching you on Instagram, and even though you filed that fairly recently, you still have some new ones to add. What’s the new new that you’ve been excited about?
The other night I went to, and this is another super high-end thing. I rarely eat at these kind of places, but it came kind of back-to-back. It’s called Shota Omakase, and it’s in Williamsburg on South Third, down near the whole Domino area, and that was also just incredible. So, it’s basically just 17 courses. This dude is back there, and he’s just making up these incredible pieces of sushi, and then he hands them to you in his hand and you grab them and pop them in your mouth. That sort of place. But it was all these strange cuts and there were these teeny little shrimp the size of maggots put into a ball and then put on rice and given to you. It was incredible.
We did cover Shota, and [writer Max Kalnitz] I guess was pretty early to it.
One place I haven’t written about yet, right before Christmas I went, and it’s called Gator, and that also is in Greenpoint, like everything else that opened this year. That also is really, really good. Very comfort food, great neighborhood place. Keep your eye out for Gator coming after the new year.
Well, let’s talk about the 12 that were on the list. It’s a range from the possibly predictable, you have Ilis on there. You called out Gabriel Stulman’s and April Bloomfield’s Sailor, and so did a lot of people in their year-end lists. But then there’s stuff like Fatima’s, a chain from California that serves gloopy halal burritos. What was the sort of criterion for your list? It’s eclectic and inclusive.
It was really just my favorite places I ate. If that is a burrito that’s covered in spicy hot Cheetos, then so be it. But it also has a lot to do with vibes. A place like Lingo in Greenpoint, also. Kind of under the radar a little bit.
I still haven’t been there.
Sort of fancy, a little bit grown up, but just delicious food and just really chill, and just sort of nice. Not really on trend in any way, but just really, really good food. And then of course, probably the restaurant I ate at most this year was Super Burrito.
Super Burrito opened in the Rockaways. They came to Williamsburg this year. They are currently doing a pop-up at Threes Brewing in Gowanus as well. They make maybe one of my current favorite late night — maybe had a couple drinks — dishes. It’s the Dankwrap, which is their take on the [Taco Bell] Crunchwrap. It’s so good.
Ugh. Unbelievable. So, Super Burrito was two guys from San Francisco. Eugene Cleghorn is the only one still involved. His partner moved back to San Francisco. But it’s just these big-ass San Francisco mission-style belly bombs that are just stuffed with stuff. It’s absolutely delicious. Costs you whatever, 15 bucks for a meal that just will fill you up forever. It just feels like a place that you want one of these kind of places every other block in your neighborhood. Just places you can pop in, grab a really good meal, very low-key, good music playing, people are happy in there. It’s very low stress, and it’s delicious.
What I like about your work is that there’s a lack of stuffiness. You’re more of an enthusiast than ever super critical, which is not to say you don’t have taste, but is there an underlining philosophy to how you approach this?
No, it really is just like, ‘Do I feel good while I’m sitting there?’ Like Swoony’s, which is Sal Lamboglia‘s, Cafe Spaghetti guy, his sequel, Swoony’s. And just when you’re sitting there, when you sit at the table, you’re like, ‘Ah, yes. This is exactly where I want to be tonight.’ It doesn’t really matter whether it’s high-end or a counter service joint. It’s just like, oh, this was a good choice to be in this place right now. And then if the food is good and made with love, you can kind of see that a mile away, too. Sometimes you walk into a place and you can tell, “Oh, this is a marketing idea that two people put together.” They didn’t know what to do, so they came out with like, this will make us some money. And you can just, you can tell right away. The food just, there’s no love to it.
You can practically see the deck that they sent to investors, right?
Exactly. Everything on my list, and everything I really like, is just people just doing what they really want to do: “I really love this idea. I love this kind of food. It means something to me. And I love feeding people.” And I also really like when people live in the neighborhood where they open the restaurant, which happens quite a bit, especially in Brooklyn, it seems. You’re feeding your neighbors, so you can’t really fake it with them, because they’re going to see right through it, and they’re not going to come back, and then you got to deal with seeing these people all over the place.
I think Swoony’s is a great example of that, and Cafe Spaghetti before it, which is right around the corner. I’ve been to Swoony’s twice now already and it’s just a great burger. The Crab Louie is fantastic.
It’s my favorite dish on the menu.
But to your point, yeah. You get in there and you’re like, “Okay, this is where I want to be.” You mentioned Lingo as something that’s not necessarily on trend. What were the food trends that are shaping the scene right now, and then what’s a trend you want to see go away?
Diners and luncheonettes. That’s still going strong. They’re rebooted. They’re rethought. Not too elevated, not gimmicky, not theme park-y, but just people realizing that the romanticism of the diner is very powerful in all of us. It’s a place you can go, sit with some friends, and there’s no rush, and you get some food, and you can just chill. And I think that a lot of people are trying to tap into that.
To that point, there’s a little bit of news that came up very recently. Kellogg’s Diner was purchased. Kellogg’s Diner, the iconic Williamsburg diner that’s just plopped right down there on the corner. There’s some exciting, potentially, coming. The news is out, but we’ll see how it is executed.
That’s the restaurant I’m looking most forward to in 2024. So, Jackie Carnesi [is taking it over]. She went up through Roberta’s and she worked at Otis for a minute. She was the head chef at Nura, which is one of my favorite restaurants in Brooklyn.
Nura’s outstanding, yeah. I had a beef tongue curry there. It was a pre fixe situation. I didn’t have a choice. It was either that or the veggie option, and I’m like, you know what? I’m going to eat the tongue curry. I have a policy of not eating food that can taste me back, but it was out of this world good. Out of this world.
Yeah, she’s great, too. So, she’s from Brownsville, Texas, which is right on the Mexican-Texas border. Her whole heritage is Tex-Mex food, which is not what she was making at Nura, but I had the chance of eating. So, twice she’s made for the Meat Hook Summer Barbecue Series, she did a whole Tex-Mex barbecue kind of thing, and then on her final night at Nura, she cooked up this Tex-Mex feast, basically. That’s kind of what she’s going to bring to Kellogg’s Diner. She’s going to be the executive chef and one of the partners there, from the people who run Tololoche and a couple of other things, too. That could be incredible. If they keep the prices diner-style a little bit. Obviously, you’re going to have to raise them a little bit.
There’s been a lot of diners, like obviously Superiority Burger in Manhattan was a case of someone turning a diner into one of the best restaurants in the city, and I really think Jackie has the potential to do that with Kellogg’s Diner. That should be opening in February, is the plan. It remains to be seen how much they’re going to do to the interior, how much they’re going to change it, upgrade it.
You want to keep that retro vibe, right? I’m sure they’ll probably class it up a little.
I’m sure. I hope they keep all those booths and all that. Yeah, like S&P Diner and the S&P, which took over the place in the Flatiron in the city, too. If you do it right, these places are the best places in the city to eat.
I don’t know if you’re going to dodge this question or not, but trends you want to see go away, or trends that you’re tired of?
It’s actually kind of gone away, which is nice, is that when you sit down to a restaurant and the server asks, “Have you ever eaten here before?” And instantly, I don’t want to answer the question “no” because then they’re going to explain how the menu works, and then it’s the whole small plates, we suggest three to five plates per person kind of thing. I think that there’s still certainly wine bars with small plates, but I think everyone’s realized that everyone now knows what that is, and so, we don’t have to make a big deal about it.
Yeah, I know how to order off a menu. Thanks.
They’re trained to do it. You got to roll with it.
Talk about neighborhoods. You’ve mentioned Greenpoint a couple times. It’s really sort of blown up as a hot spot. Let’s talk about Greenpoint.
Yeah, it’s incredible. Greenpoint Avenue especially, down at the butt end of Greenpoint Avenue as it goes into Transmitter Park. Ovenly got to open there in 2012, but the whole rest of that block was just empty. And now, there’s literally eight restaurants back to back to back to back to back to back going down to Transmitter Park, and most of them are really good, too. That’s where Lingo is. Radio Star is down there, which is also an excellent all-day diner, and it’s just wild. How can you fit that many restaurants? I mean, that whole area, like West Street, Franklin Street. There’s so much opening down there. Right now, it’s very much a destination. It used to be that people with Greenpoint, I got to transfer trains? I’m not going to get on the G. I’m not doing that. But now, Greenpoint is a very acceptable diner destination. Definitely some of the best restaurants in New York City are there.
Where else has heat? I feel like there’s some momentum in Flatbush, or at least there are a lot of places on my list that I want to get to out there that I haven’t been to yet. Where are you seeing more spots pop up?
Bed-Stuy certainly had a bunch the past couple years. One thing I’m looking forward to, coming up hopefully in January, so Little Grenjai is advertised as a Thai-American diner. It’s run by this really sweet couple, and they’re just waiting for their gas to turn on. That’s on Gates and Marcy in Bed-Stuy. They kind of got tired of waiting for the gas to get put on, and so have done this smash burger pop-ups all throughout sort of the fall. But then they’re like, you know, we’re not going to do this. We’re going to wait for the gas. So, they’re actually now in Thailand, the couple, and when they come back in January, hopefully they’ll open up as the full restaurant. They’re just waiting for ConEd, a story you hear again and again: “We’re all ready, except we just need the gas turned on.”
I think that’s what happened with George Motz and his Hamburger America. He’s been on the pod. There was a whole holdup over turning the gas on, I think.
And also, the Gotham Burger Social Club. He’s got his whole place ready in the Lower East Side, can’t get the gas on, so what he did, he’s doing the pop-up at the Greenpoint Threes Brewing, just because he wants to do something. His winter residency is in Greenpoint, so actually Brooklyn gets the first crack at the whole menu of Gotham Burger Social Club, which is also going to be one of the big openings of next year.
That was in your Quick Bites column. We’ve got to shout out Quick Bites. You’re doing a semi-regular news bite roundups of what’s happening in the restaurant world here in Brooklyn.
Hopefully once a month. Keep your eyes out, people.
What’s the most underrated restaurant out there? Or overrated.
Underrated, I would say Lingo again. I really think that’s one of my favorite restaurants, and it just does not get the kind of publicity. Oh, so La Rose, too, the pizza place, the Detroit pizza place in Cobble Hill.
I went there right after you wrote about them for us. Took my kid. It was great.
Just insane. It’s not the most dine-in sort of place, which I think there’s just a few stools at the counter. There’s no dining room, so I think that that makes it a little hard, especially come the winter. His pizzas are just incredible, and he’s also, when you talk about trends, I speak to literally hundreds of restaurateurs these past few years. I always get them kind of on opening night. They’re always very excited and all that.
You’re getting the best version of them.
They’re most pumped about this project. They’ve been working on it for months, sometimes even years, and here it is, the culmination of all that effort. Obviously, that’s a fun place to be when you’re talking to someone. The arc of these people’s story again and again and again and again, was “I was doing one thing and then the pandemic hit, and now the trajectory of my life either caromed off dramatically or a little bit, and now I’m opening this restaurant.” But if it wasn’t for March of 2020 and the lockdown, this restaurant that I’m sitting in right now probably wouldn’t have been opened.
I have dozens and dozens of stories that are like that, including La Rose. He started selling pizzas during the lockdown because he needed to make some money, and that’s sort of what became, oh, maybe I can open up a pizza place. Everyone saw at the time that, “Oh, I don’t have to kind of wait for permission to open a restaurant or to sell my stuff through Instagram and then open a restaurant or a bakery or an ice cream parlor. I can just kind of do it.” So many places now, you’re seeing are based on that moment in time, where people’s lives changed trajectory.
Trial by pop-up. That does come up a lot. Of course, you have to be good, and you have to make something people want.
Absolutely. That’s true.
What else is on the horizon? You mentioned a couple of things, but any other upcoming openings that people need to know about?
So, one thing, this just sounds good. I don’t know what it’s going to be, but a place called Strange Delight. That’s opening on Lafayette and Fort Greene, and I don’t really know when, but they were hoping for this year, 2023, so presumably, sometime in the winter. And that’s being billed as a New Orleans-style “oyster disco.”
Oh, my goodness.
I’m not sure you could turn down going to an oyster disco, or at least I know I can’t turn that down.
I’ll be there. Yeah, Fort Greene’s got some good stuff popping up. We had Gertrude’s open this year, Sailor.
Gertrude’s is awesome. Gertrude’s is more Prospect Heights, though, no?
Yeah, you’re right, actually. Sorry. Good call.
Gertrude’s does deserve a shout, though. There’s been so many great neighborhood spots that opened this year. Corner spots in neighborhoods where just a lot of people live and just want to go down the block to eat some food and be a regular there, and I think there’s a lot of that. That’s kind of what they tried to do with Sailor. At least that’s what Gabe was saying, we want this to be a neighborhood place. But that place, Sailor is of course the April Bloomfield’s return with Gabriel Stulman.
She was sort of in the hot seat for not protecting her workers during the whole Me Too meltdown [at Spotted Pig].
Yeah, yeah. Turning a blind eye to some of the things that were going on. So, this is her big return, and they really want to play it. But there’s like eight tables that you can reserve in the place. So, yes, it’s a neighborhood spot in that it’s small, but also, it’s really hard to get in, which I think is sort of frustrating for some people.
We’re recording this in the weird liminal week between Christmas and New Year’s. I’m going to try to show up at opening time and snag a table. Wish me luck. I still haven’t been.
Another opening that just happened just recently, which I haven’t been to yet, even though it’s literally two blocks away from my apartment, is this place called Formosa Dumplings. He has this big dumpling chain in China and Taiwan, and I don’t remember the name of that chain, but he just opened up this spot on Evergreen Avenue in Bushwick, so it’s kind of not in the party zone of Bushwick, but just kind of the regular people zone in Bushwick. Yeah, supposedly it’s really great. It’s noodles and dumplings. That’s what it is, and supposedly it’s excellent. So I’m sort of stoked for that.
Someone else wrote about it. But then there’s a noodles and dumplings place that’s new-ish in Park Slope that was at Smorgasburg. Noodle Lane. I just tried them for the first time. The soup dumplings survived delivery, I’m pleased to report. It was good.
I think I’ll list those Smorgasburg people, too. You got to have a lot of love for what you’re doing to go through the ranks of coming up with an idea and pitching it to Smorgasburg and getting there and then going outside, especially these days with the climate change. Weekends are just raining all the time, or it’s super hot, and you’re outside, and you got to put in a lot of hard hours to get through a season of Smorgasburg this year, or even a couple seasons, or any of those outdoor food festival sort of things. And so, to keep going on it, and then opening up your own space, to me that just shows commitment both to yourself and your idea, but also really love for what you’re doing. You clearly aren’t making a lot of money, any of these junctures. I’m always on the lookout for places like that.
Smorgasburg is such an obvious, established phenomenon. I wonder, is there anything like it that is competitive out there? Is it now it’s established and it’s not the new hotness anymore? Is there something else that might come along and be a challenge to something like a Smorgasburg?
I mean, it’s like the MASC guys. They do the Uptown Night Market up in Harlem. They used to do the Bronx Night Market up in Fordham Plaza. And then, for the past two years, they’ve done the Brooklyn Night Market in Industry City, and that’s only a once a month. Not like Smorgasburg, which is once a week obviously, in two locations. That’s just lit. That place is just jam-packed over in Industry City when they did that.
It was like the first or last Monday of every month or something like that. I have an office down there, and the first time, you’re like what is going on here? The energy is really off the charts, especially compared to Smorg, yup.
And obviously, Queens Night Market, too. But, I think that what all these places are seeing, especially this past summer, was that the weather’s really playing havoc with them. You can obviously, if you sign up for doing weekends for a summer, you can obviously count on a certain number of rainy days where you’re not going to have business, but then you suddenly got like half of them. Half of your planned days are rained out. It’s not good. A lot of those vendors are really saying I don’t know. What is the future going to be for these outdoor, regularly scheduled markets?
You also write more than just about food for us, and [are] shooting more than just food. You’ll be shooting the Polar Bear Plunge for us.
Hell, yeah. Not going in.
I went in last year. It was easy. I mean, it was warm outside. The water was no joke. That [coverage] will probably be going live the day this goes live, or the day after, so that’s a big day. You’ve got Idiotarod coming up.
Yeah, Idiotarod. Always a blast. Idiotarod, coming up in, I think it’s the last Saturday in January, and basically, you’ve heard of the Iditarod. Well, this is the Idiotarod, and it started out like a team of people dressed thematically, like aliens or furries or sexy something, push around a shopping cart through the streets of Brooklyn and basically hit five different bars over the course of 18 hours, or 10 hours, and everyone gets, as you would expect them to get after going to five bars in 10 hours, and then they trash the shopping carts, and that’s the whole event.
It’s in the spirit of Bike Kill, which is another thing that you love to shoot.
Yeah, Bike Kill. Best day of the year. That’s the last Saturday in October every year, and it’s the Black Label Bike Club people, and it’s the best party in the world. You don’t know where it’s going to be. You just ride around on these crazy Franken-bikes, mutant bikes, that these people have spent the whole year putting together to throw this party. The effort that goes into this thing is insane. And you got to shout out the Black Label Bike Club for doing this year, for people like me to just sort of show up and have fun. But they’re the ones who put it together. It’s dozens of these bikes that they’ve built from scratch, and it’s just really fun, and hundreds of people come out, and recently it’s been on the same day as, of course, the Great Pupkin, which is the dog Halloween parade in Fort Greene. Brooklyn, we’ve got a lot of variety in things you can do. You can dress up your dog as Barbie.
And then go jousting on steampunk bikes.
Exactly.
I think you covered both of those in the same day, right? You’ve been pretty prolific for us. You got to this later in life, later in your career. You actually have a day job that is not shooting pictures and writing articles. How’d you get into this?
I spent 17 years at Time Life, Time Warner, AOL-Time Warner, all of those things.
Oh, that’s right. And we did talk about that early days.
And I was sort of the creative director down there, and I had a whole going to the Time Life building, sort of a corporate kind of career. That ended. As you know, Time doesn’t even really exist anymore, and all those magazines. Went through a period of being unemployed, scary long, and just sort of started writing a blog, personal blog and blogger. This was in the mid-aughts, when the internet was very different. It wasn’t that long ago. I got my blog, which was basically about crazy things in the city going on, spectacles, and restaurants, that I would write about. I would take my kids around to restaurants and I’d write about them, and it would get noticed. It got noticed by Gothamist, by Eater, because I would link to them, and I sort of got to know all those people. Could never find a job back in the corporate world, and thank god, because I never, ever go to a meeting now in my life.
Miserable. I can change that for you. My New Year’s resolution: Meetings in 2024.
[Laughs.] Now, just doing freelance, and I also work at a preschool in the East Village as a receptionist. From eight to two, so I get to hang out with all these 60 to 80 preschool kids every day, say hi to them, goof around, and then I go out and do my own thing.
I asked [New York Times restaurant critic] Pete Wells this — he was on the podcast last year — so I’m interested to see how your answers might line up: You have a friend coming to Brooklyn for the first time, never been to Brooklyn. What is the Scott Lynch eating tour of the borough?
I would take them to the restaurants we’ve talked about already, to be honest. I think Swoony’s or Café Spaghetti are extremely Brooklyn. I think you need to go down into Bay Ridge as well. You could go to Ayat down there, which I think is really good, the Palestinian restaurant.
He’s got one in Industry City, Al Badawi on Atlantic. I love Ayat. It’s been an interesting year. The Palestinian restaurants that I do know of, Ayat, Tanoreen, are so good. We’re not going to get too political here, but during the conflict in Gaza, they’ve been seeing their Yelp pages be attacked by diners and politicizing their restaurants.
Yeah, horrible.
It is pretty horrible. But they seem to be weathering it pretty well.
I actually ate at the Ayat in the Lower East Side last night for my Christmas dinner, and the place was packed.
All right. So, Bay Ridge. Where else?
Taqueria Ramirez in Greenpoint. Best tacos in New York City.
Best al pastor I’ve had.
Yeah. I’ll eat anything that Gio [Cervantes] makes, whether that’s a burger. I’ll hit Mallard bar, or the pizza collab he did with the around the corner place. But the tacos are there are fabulous. He’s also in talks to expand, possibly to the East Village, possibly to another spot in Brooklyn. So, watch this space for that.
Any old school classics? Like, oh, if you’ve never been here, you got to go to Peter Luger, Roll-N-Roaster?
Roll-N-Roaster, there you go! So, I’ve never been to Luger. My job is basically go to the new places. If I didn’t catch it when it was new, which obviously I didn’t with Peter Luger because it’s around since like 1873 or whatever, then it’s hard for me to go. But Roll-N-Roaster I went to early in the pandemic. I biked down there. I had one of the greatest meals of the early pandemic. It was just sitting out there with a roast beef sandwich. That place is awesome.
It is awesome. I ate there on, it was I think Christmas Eve last year. You walk in and it feels like, and looks like, it did during the Carter administration. You can get a bottle of Moët for 60 bucks, or if you spend over 50, you get a free pizza, which is exactly what you want after you’ve eaten three roast beef sandwiches.
And it’s actually one of those rare places. A lot of times, I go to places and you’re like, ah, I wish this was right near me. But it would be ruined if it wasn’t way down at the end by the water. If it was more accessible, then I think it wouldn’t be nearly as good.
Where are you having dinner tonight?
Possibly Noodles in Long Island City.
Oh, yum. You write for us, but you also contribute to Hell Gate. Shout out to Hell Gate. They’re doing interesting stuff. And you eat all over the city. So, let’s expand it beyond Brooklyn, I guess. The best in all of the five boroughs. It feels like the best food is in Queens right now. What would you shout out?
Zhego. They position themselves as the only Bhutan-ese restaurant in the city, and that’s in Woodside. I love that. I had that meal last January, and I think about it all the time, especially this dish called ema datshi. I might be pronouncing that incorrectly, but it’s referred to reverentially by the staff as this is the national dish of Bhutan you’re ordering, it’s very special, and you get it, and it’s just this bowl of sliced up hot peppers covered in melted cheese. That’s it. It’s the best stoner food of your life, and it’s the national dish of Bhutan.
I wanted to ask you about your heat tolerance, because you’ve shouted out some pretty spicy stuff. I’ve got a spicy tolerant palette. I love it. I’m wondering, you’ve written about this UnTable place, which I haven’t been to yet, which has a dish called “WHAT THE HELL!! fried rice.” That’s how spicy it is. How spicy are we talking?
Twelve chili peppers is the warning sign below that. I’ll eat anything. Basically, as hot as you’ll make it, I’ll eat it. Sometimes I regret that, but I always feel like the worst thing that’s ever going to happen when you put a piece of food in your mouth is that you’re not going to like the taste of it, which is pretty low stakes, so that’s why I’ll also eat any kind of offal, organ meat, testicles. No matter what. You put it down in front of me, I will definitely take at least one bite, because really, as I said, the stakes are pretty low.
I love that outlook.
So, I’ll also do the same with heat. And I think also another place: Hainan Chicken House. Let’s talk about that, in Sunset Park. That’s this family-owned Malaysian restaurant that I kind of randomly went into back in January, almost a year ago. They served me such a great meal, I couldn’t believe this was so good, and then six months later, Pete Wells gives it two stars in the Times and it totally blew up. So, that’s just like feel good story, too. They just put together basically just Malaysian chicken, that boiled chicken recipe that kind of looks like hospital food but tastes amazing, and that’s really good.
I haven’t been there yet. I’ll check it out. Another place that you beat Pete Wells to, and I’m glad you did, Dunya Kabab House in Kensington, Afghani place. That place was great.
That was good. He gave us a shout. That was nice. Thanks, Pete, for linking to us.
Check out this episode of “Brooklyn Magazine: The Podcast” for more. Subscribe and listen wherever you get your podcasts.