Barbuto has expanded into a really glassy new room in Brooklyn.
Illustration: Naomi Otsu
Welcome to Grub Road’s rundown of restaurant suggestions that goals to reply the endlessly recurring query: The place ought to we go? These are the spots that our meals group thinks everybody ought to go to, for any motive (a brand new chef, the arrival of an thrilling dish, or perhaps there’s a gap that’s flown too far underneath the radar). This month: new Ethiopian, new Peruvian, new Thai, and two lodge eating places which can be really good??
Johnny’s (Williamsburg)
Opened by a brother-and-sister duo, Johnny’s belongs to an extended line of family-owned pollo a la brasa eating places that began in Woodside again in 1973. This barely upscaled, nonetheless unassuming nook chifa spot — the place, underneath a curtain overlaying half the window, you’ll be able to spy on the rotisserie chickens spinning on the spit within the again room — is planted in a restaurant-dense nook of Williamsburg, however it’s making a reputation for itself even with locations like Llama Inn (a really completely different Peruvian spot) and Bonnie’s close by. Sit on the bar and kick issues off with a frozen lychee pisco bitter that’s completed with a float of Angostura bitters. Then order the hen, its mahogany-brown, crisped pores and skin and facet of creamy aji verde is a boon for the neighborhood. Make it a combo with the yuca fries, minimize actual thick. There’s a vegetarian fried rice that’s precisely what you’d need out of your neighborhood Chinese language takeout, and a lomo saltado with a soy-vinegar sauce. However then once more, nobody will decide you for simply getting an entire hen and calling it a day. —Chris Crowley
Barbuto Brooklyn (Dumbo)
Jonathan Waxman’s new iteration of his West Village standby — right here sitting inside an enormous area on the backside of the 1 Resort — is the proper place for fogeys, and it goes each methods. Dad and mom visiting their grownup youngsters will admire the comfy area and just-interesting-enough meals. Dad and mom with younger youngsters of their very own to feed may also admire the comfy area, the “pasta bambini” on the menu, and the whole lot of Brooklyn Bridge Park simply exterior in case a toddler must stroll off a mid-meal meltdown. Waxman’s classics have been ported over effectively sufficient; pollo al forno remains to be probably the most agreeable roast hen within the metropolis. The brand new waterfront location additionally provides a couple of seafood dishes to suit the setting, just like the pizza al mare, garlicky clam pie topped with Maine lobster and shrimp. —Zach Schiffman
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Narkara (Union Sq.)
The Thaissance continues apace in NYC, and good contenders are arising as quick as I can go to them. I didn’t essentially have excessive hopes for Narkara, which plunked down off Union Sq.. With its cavernous dimension, costumed wait employees, and Tao-ish décor, I feared it was too fussily dressy to be actually good. However Narkara is neither bland nor unduly tourist-safe. The menu is studded with Thai specialties not universally obtainable — chilly pork-curry terrine, pig’s-blood rice — and even primary preparations are effectively dealt with. They may even shock you. I used to be skeptical when my date argued for roast hen, however amid the cool raw-corn salad and stir-fried duck curry, it was my favourite dish of the night time, sugared with candy chile sauce on one hand and pricked by a fishy, fermented chile sauce on the opposite. (Apparently, Khao Suan Kwang in northeastern Thailand is famend for its talent elevating and grilling birds, and this one is a tribute to that facility.) I’ll be again for the pork terrine. —Matthew Schneier
Seahorse (Union Sq.)
Roughly 1,000 toes away from Narkara on seventeenth Road, John McDonald, Soho restaurateur extraordinaire, has expanded north. After years of delays, his new spot within the W Resort is open and, based mostly on a latest go to, already stuffed with lovely folks settling into the plush blue cubicles. What’s on the menu? Seafood, in variations that can be immediately acquainted to even probably the most inexperienced fisherman: recent crudo slicked with olive oil, stacks of oysters, spicy lobster pasta, tuna au poivre, and Dover sole filleted on the desk (after all). Not one of the meals is especially adventurous, which appears to be precisely the purpose. This isn’t a restaurant to go to to really feel culinarily challenged. This can be a restaurant for wooing dates and shutting offers. That you may eat effectively doing both is the actual bonus. —Alan Sytsma
Zoma Categorical (Higher West Facet)
This delivery-friendly Ethiopian restaurant opened a couple of month in the past, just some blocks south of the unique Zoma, which was a standby on Frederick Douglass Boulevard for greater than a decade till the pandemic closed it down. The follow-up was by no means meant to seat clients, however a handful of tables, chairs, and Zafferano lamps have been added to the transformed ready space final week by widespread demand. The kitchen does proper by their two beef dishes: Zoma tibs, cubed sirloin stir-fried with honey wine till saucy; and kitfo, tartare that will get freshly chopped to order and seasoned with cardamom, extremely popular red-chile powder, and heat butter. All the vegetable dishes are made vegan, together with a inexperienced and garlicky gomen, the place the collard greens have been cooked to a nice al dente, and well-spiced misir wot. It’s all served with a adequate quantity of gluten-free injera that’s brown, bubbly, and even higher than earlier than. Attempt it as kategna, infused with butter and berbere and fried till crisp whereas the spices flip darkish and fragrant. —Tammie Teclemariam
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