Where to eat Lebanese in Brooklyn
One of the best cuisines. Let's talk about it
I’ve been thinking a lot about horrifying recent events in Lebanon. There’s not much you can do with a Substack food recommendation newsletter aside from recommend food — not at all helpful when over a million people in a far-off country have been displaced and slaughtered, obviously — but this is the platform I have, so I’m going to use it to offer my take on where to get the best Lebanese food in Brooklyn.
Way back in April, I got to write about a few new Lebanese restaurant openings back-to-back. In my interviews with the restaurant owners, they claimed opposite things about Lebanese food in Brooklyn: One owner said there were zero Lebanese restaurants in Brooklyn aside from Bay Ridge, and the other said that they were following a long tradition of Lebanese settlers on Atlantic Ave. Confusing!
What’s the truth? Well, there aren’t many restaurants that claim solely Lebanese heritage, but there are a lot of restaurants that serve Lebanese food. There’s a rich history of Arab eateries on Atlantic Avenue — think about the block of Lebanese grocery Sahadi’s, which also hosts several Yemeni restaurants — and you can get good muhammara, an addictive dip made from red pepper and pomegranate, anywhere that serves Levantine food. Add that to the new openings, and I’ve found that there are many ways to get your hands on Lebanese food in Brooklyn, if you care to look — and since April, I’ve made it my mission to try a bunch of them. Here’s the best of where I went.
Sawa (75 Fifth Ave)
Sawa finally got its long-overdue New York Times write-up yesterday, but when I wrote about it in April (not-so-subtle flex), I immediately clocked it as one of the best new restaurants of the year. Owned by siblings Samaya and George, Sawa is a homey spot on Fifth Avenue where pita is baked fresh in-house, hummus comes topped with wagyu, and the meat jumps off the lamb shank bone. This is the highest-quality Lebanese food I’ve eaten, yet it remains largely unpretentious, thanks to chef Soroosh Golbabae’s careful presentation. Come hungry and order plates to share — everything is good, especially anything made with pomegranate molasses.
Huda (312 Leonard St)
Williamsburg’s Huda is one of those sneaky Levantine restaurants I mentioned up top — it’s dedicated to a larger geographic area, but still serves some fantastic, upscale Lebanese food. When I visited last January, I got this quote from chef Anjuman Hossain about the intention behind Huda:
A lot of the time, when you think of nations associated with the Levant, whether it be Syria, Palestine, Jordan, you think of violence. The only time you hear those names is when you hear of war and fighting for democracy. But we're people too, and we eat and we have fun. So it’s nice to be like, “Hey, this is part of Levantine history as well.”
If you’re looking to experience Lebanese specifically at Huda, order the shish barak, a classic Lebanese dish of beef dumplings in yogurt; here, they shape the dumplings like tortellini, and top off the pasta with spicy oil and pine nuts.
Nabila’s (248 Court St)
Nabila’s is a mostly-mezze spot in Cobble Hill, located on a pretty darling corner with great outdoor seating. It’s a fantastic place to try if you’re not so knowledgeable about Lebanese food — there’s a section of the menu composed solely of small bites that cost only $3 a pop, which is perfect for experimenting. Get their kibbeh, which is a meatball made from bulgur wheat, onion, and ground beef, and then stuffed with spiced meat and whole pine nuts. Also, the eggplant dish pictured — dotted with tomatoes and pomegranates and drenched in molasses-lemon dressing — rocked my world.
Tripoli Restaurant (156 Atlantic Ave)
Most of the other restauranteurs on this list hail from the city of Beirut; Tripoli Restaurant, by contrast, is owned by folks from Tripoli, Lebanon’s second-largest city. Something fun and cheeky about Tripoli Restaurant is that it’s in a bunker — you need to descend several flights of stairs to find the dining room, located in the grotto underneath my favorite neighborhood cafe. Once we traveled to the center of the earth, we ordered their special Lebanese traditional mezze course, which comes with twenty teeny tiny plates all for $50. (The table looked ridiculous.) Not all the servings were equal — we only got one tiny medallion of chicken to split — but they were pretty delicious, and made for such a fun dining experience.
El Cedro (144 Atlantic Ave)
El Cedro is a fast-casual Lebanese taqueria opened by Maher Chebaro, a restauranteur from Lebanon who is obsessed with Mexican food. (If that sounds familiar, you might have read my piece about it when it opened!) You’re not going to get typical Lebanese food here — most of it comes with a Mexican twist, like the shawarma pollo asado tacos. I think El Cedro’s bandera dip is a particularly brilliant fusion moment: it comes with guac, labneh, and muhammara to represent the green, white, and red of both the Mexican and Lebanese flags. (Points off for less-than-perfect pita, but the chips that also come with the dips get the job done.)
Things to be excited about
I’ve gotten such kind feedback about this section that I am going to continue it. Here are some news items to be excited about:
A new American bistro on the corner of 78th Street and 2nd Avenue called Nightly’s opens tonight, and I’m kind of obsessed with the menu design, which features a bunch of sleek-looking animals having a last-supper-esque meal together. (Like that painting of dogs playing poker, if the vibes were more Sex and the City.) Maybe will become the Long Island Bar of Manhattan? Remains to be seen.
Danish restaurant Smør just expanded into Clinton Hill on October 16th. The new location is way bigger, with a mostly-new menu aside from the Danish Hot Dogs (!), and will operate as a bakery (selling cardamom buns) (!!!) during the day.
Pan Pan Vino Vino, my go-to spot in Greenpoint for both pan and vino, just brought in the highly-acclaimed chef Alex Ureña (former chef de cuisine at Blue Hill and Marseille, as well as at several Michelin-starred restaurants in Europe) as a consultant to re-zhuzh the menu. Very excited to try the new braised short ribs and oyster mushrooms under his direction.
Best things I ate recently
Fried onion rings at Kellogg’s Diner
The ever-lovely Hannah Wright brought me to Kellogg’s this month, where everything was decadent — shoutout to the flat nachos, served with generous hunks of steak fajita on top — but my favorite dish was the fried onion rings, which come with a side of insanely good house-made ranch.
Bao bun + sesame noodle combo at Bao By Kaya
Got this lunch special at Bao By Kaya’s location at the Urbanspace food market at Zero Irving (sexy address). Duck bao was good, red curry shredded chicken was GREAT — fluffy exterior, crunchy toppings, perfectly-spiced chicken, ideal portion size. Will be making this meal a habit.
Half-off lobster for lobster week at Red Hook Lobster Pound
We had no clue that it was lobster week and then all of a sudden two great red beasts were plopped down in front of us. It’s universally true that a two-for-one deal will make anything taste good, and these were no exception.
In Other News
Wrote some bookish stuff this month.
The borough’s best indie publishers – I spoke to so many (sooo many) small press publishers for this piece for Brooklyn Magazine. So cool to get a chance to chat with so many people I admire! Writers rule and the people who give them a platform to share their work rule double.
Emily Nussbaum is getting realer than real – My first book review finally came out in Public Seminar. I wrote this many months ago and was EXTREMELY stressed about getting it right, but the brilliant Emily just messaged me about it, so I am counting it as a win.
That’s all for now. With love,
Hannah