when you want, where you want.
Where to Eat in July
Illustration: Naomi Otsu
Welcome to Grub Street’s rundown of restaurant recommendations that aims to answer the endlessly recurring question Where should we go? These are the spots our food team thinks everyone should visit — for any reason (a new chef, the arrival of an exciting dish, or maybe there’s an opening that has flown too far under the radar). This month: more new French, more new pizza, more new pasta, and another all-day café in Brooklyn. And guess what? They’re all fantastic.
Lucky Charlie (Bushwick)
Nino Coniglio is a Brooklyn-pizza lifer. He called Dom DeMarco a mentor, opened his first spot in Marine Park in 2009, and helped kick off the slice-shop revival with Williamsburg Pizza. Now, he’s in Bushwick with Lucky Charlie, which he and his wife, Shealyn Sharleen Brand, opened along with the Sicily-born, Bushwick-raised Charlie Verde. The restaurant’s namesake, Verde runs an importing company and owns the building, where he previously ran a pizzeria after discovering a coal oven that is, apparently, ancient history. On opening night, he was holding court at a four-top, riffing in Italian with friends who had flown in from Italy. Inside, it looks like a social club everyone belongs to. Anelletti is baked in a ceramic bowl sealed with pizza dough, meant to be dipped in the rich ragù, and a focaccia bread board comes with enough mashed anchovies to fill the Adriatic. Pies are super-crisp but not too rigid, reminiscent of spots like the original Patsy’s, the mozzarella baked hard into fresh tomato sauce. The options are traditional (classic, white, and red), and the partners are promising to burn coals late into the night. —Chris Crowley
Bottega (Crown Heights)
This café from the owners of the East Village osteria Maretta feels almost Angeleno: Sandwiches recall those of Wax Paper’s, delicately overstuffed and ready for a close-up. A tomato sandwich, layered with cucumber ribbons, pickles, sprouts, horseradish, and mascarpone, lets tomato shine while still feeling adventurous. And you could technically call the tuna sandwich a melt, but its variously pickled accoutrements — red onion, artichokes sott’olio, peperoncini, capers — make it something more. The best order for this sweltering weather, however, might be the green-goddess farro salad, filled with peas, ricotta, and hazelnuts for crunch. Though Bottega currently closes at 4 p.m., a spritz-heavy cocktail menu hints at a future beyond breakfast and lunch. —Zach Schiffman
Chez Nous (Greenwich Village)
The lobby restaurant of the Marlton Hotel, after opening with fanfare in 2016, had lately settled into sleepy disuse. It was a good place to hold a quick coffee meeting, if only because it was reliably quiet and undersubscribed. But New York real-estate law mandates that which is momentarily vacant will be swiftly revised. The literary agent David Kuhn has partnered with the hotel’s Sean MacPherson to jazz up the joint, which has now returned as Chez Nous. Our place? Sure, if the guest list includes the very connected Kuhn’s friends (like artists Hugo Guinness, who designed the new logo, and Cecily Brown, who contributed a great mural in the back dining room). Kuhn’s life partner, the production designer Kevin Thompson, has redone the dining room in nouveau-Parisian style, and Flossie Gilles, formerly of Le Bilboquet, the bistro-leaning menu. She does a very nice quarter-chicken (served, more lushly than most in the city, with pommes purées and “escargot sauce”), and there’s a Roquefort-topped burger, but, this being New York, also a GLP-1-friendly “vegetarian niçoise” and a Palm Beach salad of shrimp and avocado, although here we call it not Palm Beach but Saint-Tropez and send it abroad with cured fennel, preserved lemon, and big green Castelvetranos. —Matthew Schneier
Le Chêne (West Village)
One of the less appreciated traditions of summer is staying in the city while one-percenters take their families and class anxiety out of town. That means now is the time to get to this small extremely polished spot from the chef Alexia Duchêne and her husband, Ronan Duchêne Le May. To match the white tablecloths and burgundy-red banquettes, Duchêne cooks in the French-luxury mold but is not precious about her presentation: Rosy rack of lamb is simply sauced, while roasted squab is quartered before it’s served with bits of foie gras and morels. Green beans, battered and fried and meant to be dipped in tarragon yogurt, seem to be on every table, as does the house pithivier, a dome of pastry lidding over pork sausage and eel. Matthew Schneier, a colleague who knows far more about grand crus than I ever will, says the wine list is a wonder. I would say the same about a peach tart that appeared for dessert, simple and exquisite. Go before all the well-heeled Francophiles are back in town. I’m guessing it will be impossible to get a table this fall. —Alan Sytsma
Osteria Radisa (Carroll Gardens)
Nobody would have said this stretch of Brooklyn needed another Italian restaurant, but this one has brought a distinct Adriatic breeze to a Smith Street corner. The menu is hearty from the start with baccalà mantecato — salt cod whipped with potatoes, raisins, olives, and pine nuts — strewn with tender escarole and enough croutons to stand in for the usual bread on the side. Lamb spiedini are wrapped in caul fat and come on a base of stewed chicories imbued with olive oil; braised greens are a recurring theme, like Swiss chard on top of crisp branzino that’s bathing in an emulsion of raw tomatoes. Pastas are another highlight: Oregano oil and garlic scapes sauce eight big ricotta-stuffed ravioli verdi, and cappellacci is filled with shredded beef cheek before being topped with beech mushrooms coated in rich, sticky gravy and a drizzle of Parmigiano cream. —Tammie Teclemariam
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