Atlanta Good Food category interest

This North Brooklyn neighborhood has some of the best Mexican restaurants in this city, as well pizza places where you should host your birthday, excellent Thai food, and a whole lot more. (Check out our separate guide for Bushwick bars.) The next time you’re looking for a restaurant off the L, use this guide like it’s your own personal teleprompter during an Oscars speech. Minus the disruptive music, of course.

THE SPOTS

Plaza Ortega is the kind of place where you can bring all your friends and eat great food while you hang out for a couple of hours. This is a Mexican restaurant, bodega, and ice cream shop rolled into one, with a long bar and a few tables in the back. The menu is filled with highlights. Try a few tacos, a substantial torta, or some exceptional birria ramen that uses Nissin Cup Noodles as its base.

The next time you want to have an upscale Big Night Out in a space that feels like one of Brooklyn’s great dinner parties, make a reservation at Falansai. This Vietnamese restaurant existed for years before an ex-Blue Hill at Stone Barns chef took over the kitchen in 2020. Since then, they’ve switched to serving a list of (mostly) sub-$30 dishes that range from a spicy curry packed with Greenmarket vegetables, to confit duck necks covered in an umami bomb sauce that’s equal parts sweet and zippy.

The pizza at Ops fits somewhere between crispy New York-style and soppy-in-the-middle Neapolitan. Each slice remains straight when you hold it up in the air, but the crust puffs up like a balloon. Truthfully, it doesn’t matter what you call the style. What matters is that you’re going to want to become a regular at this dimly lit sourdough pizza emporium. Don’t leave without trying the “Cicero,” which the menu accurately describes as having “many onions.″ Ops pulls their own mozzarella in house almost daily, so order any pie that features it. We also suggest a calzone or the thicker square pie if you’re with a group.

At Taqueria Al Pastor, you should, of course, order the al pastor tacos. They come piled with strips of crispy pork and cubes of pineapple, and a single hefty taco constitutes a very respectable snack. But the carne asada is even better. Cut into chunks the size of seven-carat diamonds, the beef is garlicky, well-seasoned, and as bountiful as snowflakes in a snowstorm. Taqueria Al Pastor’s guacamole also has some nice kick, and the housemade corn tortillas are sturdy with the right amount of chew. The same team also has a seafood-only spot down the street called Antojitos Marineros.

Some of the neighborhood's most exciting food isn't from a restaurant. It's coming out of a tiny kitchen in the back of the longtime, neon-lit dive bar Alphaville. There you’ll find just a couple of people cooking excellent steak frites doused in a Sichuan peppercorn-heavy au poivre sauce for $20 a pop. This little operation also does a great bar burger, chicken nuggets that taste like real chicken, and not-too-sweet frozen strawberry-basil margaritas. (Or a beer-shot combo.) If you're lucky, maybe you'll even learn how to line dance.

Eyval is from the team behind Prospect Heights’ Sofreh, and it’s where you should be eating Persian food in Bushwick. Portions are small, and the plating is chic, so your first impression might be that you’re getting pretentious food at pretentious prices—but dishes like the tahdig and must o musir topped with sprigs of dill have a startling amount of flavor. This restaurant has buzzy energy, so it’s perfect for a leisurely night out with a group of friends.

This Korean restaurant makes one of the best burgers in the city, and pizza with Korean toppings like gochujang and rice cakes. The original East Village location doesn’t do the pizza, so we prefer this bigger Bushwick edition. The neon-lit warehouse space is a fun place to bring a friend or small group that'll appreciate good cocktails, tiger print, and two different projectors playing early aughts rap videos.

Many have tried to recreate that most iconic—and dare we say, revolutionary—of handheld foods: Taco Bell’s Crunchwrap Supreme. Blue Hour, a takeout window inside the BP gas station on Myrtle, truly nails their version. The Cwunch Wap Supweme is compact, contained, and has a tostada inside that stays crispy, even after your walk home. Conceived by the folks behind Little Flower, Blue Hour make halal versions of late-night classics like chopped cheese, chicken tenders, chicken-on-rice, and more. Most things on the menu are under $10, and they’re open until 10pm on weekdays, and 3am on weekends.

The neighborhood's most famous restaurant, Roberta's put Bushwick on the pizza map, kickstarting the city’s new Neapolitan movement out of a warehouse that looks like a shipping crate. They’ve since commercialized, with locations in Midtown and Los Angeles, but the original, and its sprawling back room, is still the scene of countless birthday parties, group dinners, and second dates. The best way to eat here is to sit outside and order a bunch of pizza and beer, starting with their classic Bee Sting pie, drizzled with honey. (They also have salads, appetizers, and seafood, but that’s not why you eat here.) If you aren’t in the mood for a Neapolitan, they have a handy slice shop around the corner called R.Slice, which sells New York-style slices with sourdough crusts.

A long bar stocked with rhum agricole is Maloya’s biggest draw, but the food at this candlelit Réunionese restaurant is also a great introduction to Indian Ocean créole cooking, making this a good choice for low-key drinks that might turn into dinner. Get an assorted snack platter—it comes in a woven basket with a toy-sized pot of chutney, and should include the excellent pork samoussas, fragrant with combava (makrut). You could stop there, but the entrees, all under $25, are worth delving into. Try the swordfish massalé, tender cubes of swordfish in a tamarind broth, or the rougail saucisses with housemade sausages. Just don’t expect heavy seasoning or fancy plating. This is more like having a meal in a home, complete with double-handed cooking pots, directly from the island.

If you live near Bushwick, use this casual Thai spot like a DJ uses house samples—often and skillfully. Tong’s dining room looks like a miniature Cost Plus World Market where someone might take a yoga class or read in a hammock, and the wooden outdoor structure around its partially-covered sidewalk patio is wrapped in string lights. The menu has a section dedicated to small plates (like gai tod and grilled calamari), and all of them deserve your undivided attention. If you need a casual spot to meet up with a few friends or have a luxurious solo dinner, come here.

Hills Kitchen serves delicious Nigerian specialties and West African dishes in a narrow room with only half a dozen tables. It’s one of the best places to eat along Maria Hernandez Park, regardless of whether you bring your jollof to the park or split a couple dishes with a friend in the dining room. If you need something hearty, get the efo soup, which is thick, rich, and packed with spinach. The people who run this restaurant also operate Hills Place in Marine Park, another great Nigerian spot you should know about.

There are several ways to approach a meal at this legendary Ethiopian restaurant, but your easiest and best route is The Feast—a giant plate of dishes like spicy misir wot, garlic-forward gomen, and gingery shiro. The appetizers are also great, and you can add extra orders of any of the dishes à la carte.

The specialty at this casual Mexican deli is their crispy-gooey, cheese-filled quesabirria. Whether you want a birria burrito, quesadilla, taco, or mulita, it’ll be served along with a layer of melted cheese. The union of meat-soaked orange tortillas, stewed beef, and caramelized cheese is something we all should be grateful for.

In the event you want to spend around $15 on something portable, head straight to Carmenta’s on Wilson Avenue in Bushwick. This Italian deli has a handful of stools, a counter with bags of fresh pasta for sale, and a few employees who make incredible Italian food while listening to indie rock from the early 2000s. You'll find excellent pastas and a beef-and-pork meatball parm on a Parisi bakery roll that you’ll want to eat once a week.

We like the meat substitutes at this casual Chinese-inspired restaurant in Bushwick more than we do at most other vegan spots in the city. There’s a really good plate of sesame “beef” made of soy protein and some seitan bbq “roast pork.” Whatever you get, make sure to try some fried king oyster mushrooms with a batter that tastes like onion rings and wonton soup. It's the most flavorful version of this dish we’ve had.

Maite is a cute date spot serving European and Colombian-influenced food. Their menu has everything from empanadas and ribeye served with an arepa to grilled squash and burrata with squid ink. The options rotate almost daily, and they’re all listed on a big chalkboard by the bar. We find that we have to order a bunch of stuff here to be full, so prepare to spend at least $50-ish per person.

Sea Wolf is one of those casual neighborhood restaurants that’s always overflowing with dates and groups during Happy Hour and brunch. As the name suggests, it’s a place to eat marine creatures (not wolves). Get some discounted oysters from 4-7pm every day, and try your best to sit in their roped-off patio section on Wyckoff Avenue.

You’ll realize you’re in for a good time the moment you make your way down the stairs into the subterranean dining room at Mao Mao, a Thai restaurant on Broadway. The combination of twinkly lights, vintage signs, and Thai movie posters will make you want to have your next birthday here. Come with a few friends, work your way through every page of the menu (our favorite dish is the khao mun gai), and plan to linger over Thai beers and tastes of different kinds of ya dong.

At Arepera Guacuco, you’ll eat thick corn patties packed with fillings like pernil and pabellon (beef, cheese, beans, plantains) in a super casual environment. This is a family-run establishment, named after the beach where the owner’s mother was born—and that mother runs the kitchen.

There are places serving better tacos in Bushwick, but Tortilleria Los Hermanos remains one of our favorite spots to hang out. At this tortilla factory, you order at the counter, then claim a table in the warehouse-like space and enjoy a meal that likely cost you less than $15. In addition to tacos, there are tostadas, tortas, and quesadillas. Don't forget to BYOB, and don’t miss out on the housemade red hot sauce. You want it all over everything you get here.