The best Bushwick restaurants

At this vegetarian Ethiopian charmer, you’ll get a spread of traditional bites, including red lentils in berbere sauce, mashed split peas simmered with tomato, and a chickpea stuffing with kale. Cool the heat of the spicier flavors with a strip of injera.

A Taiwanese-American spot in East Williamsburg by Josh Ku  and Trigg Brown serving sloppy baos, fried eggplant and sticky tofu with pickled kumquat. If you want a crash course on East Williamsburg, this is the neighborhood spot to get a feel for the creativity on this side of the bridge.  

A pizza pioneer, this sustainable-food mecca and buzzed-about hangout spot proves that chefs can treat pies with as much care and creativity as fine dining. One of our favorites, the Bee Sting, boasts a perfect balance of tomatoes, mozzarella, caciocavallo, sopressata, chili, basil and spicy honey. Pro tip: Grab a seat outdoors, and order some salads and charcuterie to round out your feast.

Danny Bowien’s Mission Chinese Bushwick opened on the ground level of Elsewhere music venue, quickly establishing the restaurant as a neighorbood favorite. Here you'll find its signature Chongqing chicken wings and kung pao pastrami, but, for the most part, rehashing best-hits ends there. The new Mission Chinese menu feels more appropriate for the younger neighborhood: more fun, less expensive and flexible to dietary restrictions (many items can be made vegan). 

Slurp up a big bowl of phô at this Bushwick joint that serves  Vietnamese fare in a casual setting. With mismatched chairs, beach-picnic vibes and a lively playlist, Bunker feels like a hidden house party (there's a skate ramp) with excellent eats. In addition to brothy beef, chicken and vegan noodle soups, the menu features an array of hearty bánh mì  (one standout with mushrooms grow behind the lot), rich coconut curries, grilled meats and seafood perfumed with lemongrass.

Attached to House of Yes, known for its theme parties, LGBTQ-forward nightlife and excellent all-night dancing, is this perfect falafel spot for drunk eating, that holds up anytime of day, too. The menu was designed by Rivka Orlin of Cafe Mogador. Even better? 10% of all Queen of Falafel's profits are donated to an orphanage in Kathmandu, Nepal.

Calling all solo diners: Ramen chain Ichiran, which combats the social stigma of eating alone with individual “flavor concentration booths” at its 60 locations in Asia, brings its introvert-friendly service system stateside with a Bushwick outpost. The dining process consists of filling out an order form—the kitchen concentrates on pork-bone tonkotsu ramen, but you can specify preferences like “flavor strength,” “noodle tenderness” and “fat content”—and pushing a call button in the partitioned solo booth.

Enjoy carribbean bites like cod fish cakes, jerk ribs or braised oxtail with rice and peas, while sipping on one of their cocktails like the "Catch a Fire" with Aperol and pineapple, the "Sundowner" with frozen guava, or the "Dancehall" with blueberries and rum. Sally Roots is also home to one of Bushwick's best patios.

While the slices at this no-frills-yet-elegant eatery are indeed delicious—try the Juno, with broccoli rabe and potatoes—it’s also one of the only pizzerias that offers exciting natural wines, placing it in a league of its own. People love Ops’ curation of choice bottles so much, the owners recently opened a wine shop, Forêt Wines, in nearby Ridgewood.

For far too long Petra has remained Bushwick's secret. From the team behind Henry's wine shop and Sunrise/Sunset coffee, Petra is the team's first foray into "fancy-casual" dining. Sitting on the Bushwick/Ridgewood border, the terrazzo and millennial pink spot (nearby dancing at Nowadays) is located on an otherwise sleepy block, worth a trip even if you don't live in the neighborhood. 

What originally began as pop-ups landing at Baby's All Right and Kinfolk, Kichin has now landed a permenant spot in Bushwick. The menu includes modern Korean plates such as chrysanthemum salad with snap peas and burdock, perilla leaf jeon with wood ear and yuba, rice cakes with gochujang and halloumi, beet japchae, jajangmyeon with black beans and roasted pork, mussels with anchovy butter as well as cauliflower wings with bird chili and agave. It's one of a few restaurants that services the late-night crowd from nearby Bossa Nova Civic Club, Mood Ring and Birdy's.  

Inspired by a beloved Wisconsin supper club of the same name that was opened for 80 years, The Turk's Inn opens in New York to much Midwest fan fare, hoping to keep the spirit of the original space alive. The Bushwick revival continues the kitschy, decadence of the original in a sprawling 5000 sq-ft. 60-seat space. The chophouse-style menu includes halloumi and cheddar bites with knoblauch sauce, green bean falafel with mushroom sauce and dry onion, moussaka, "jeweled pilaf," grilled whole porgy with lemon sauce, pork chop with coffee rub and grilled cabbage, among others.

Chef Henry Trieu brings a little Vietnam love to Bushwick. The San Francisco import—who imbued traditional Vietnamese flavors with fine-dining finesse at Charles Phan's acclaimed Slanted Door—roots through the street food of his childhood for this 54-seat joint. Named after his Chaozhou-bred father’s mispronunciation of the world Français, Trieu’s cross-cultural restaurant unites Vietnamese and French fare. The Saigon-style/ Southern Vietnamese cuisine offers dishes like the caramelized catfish claypot, Chinese okra, as well as Shaking Beef.

Located inside a Bushwick tortilla factory, this off-the-beaten-path taqueria serves tacos, tostadas and tortas filled with meats like salted beef, carnitas and chorizo. The digs are sparse—nothing more than a few plastic tables with folding chairs and paper plates—but it's one of our favorite places in whole neighborhood. Best part? It's BYOB.

Rachel Allswang trades a career in interior design for the family business, joining forces with her acclaimed Parisian cuisinière mother, Catherine, for this Bushwick bistro. The project also serves as the New York debut for the prolific French chef, whose extensive 30-year restaurant portfolio includes La Laiterie Sainte Clotilde and Chez Graff in Paris, and Le Mistral and South Park Café in San Francisco. 

This new East Williamsburg venture offers something that this neighborhood, despite all of its recent change-over, has yet to really see: A pleasant environment (here designed by Space Exploration and Staci Dover Design) for working in and with excellent food. It seems like a simple enough concept, but Apollonia will set the bar for other newcomers nearby.  The mediterranean-inspired menu is led by Jordan Heissenberger (formerly of Rucola, Buvette, Faun and Vinegar Hill House) with weekday lunch, brunch and dinner. 

Inside, Aztec-temple murals and banana-leaf wallpaper anchor the retro-soundtracked room, where Hawaiian-shirt-clad servers bustle towering hurricane glasses and taco salads to a crush of fringe-booted women and man-bunned guys. 

It certainly doesn’t look like an orchard. The transformed brick warehouse sits across from a Pure Energy gas station and a U-Haul dealer, with nary a tree in sight. Dented tin barriers guard the entrance, and abstract grafitti (we did decipher some apples) cover the inside and outside walls, which contain spray-painted mottos—some sensical (“Ugly apples taste better”), some not so much (“If you love me I will light the room,” “Bright as a firefly defeating the sun”).