“I love New York, and I love the restaurants here—especially the small, weird ones,” says Alison Roman. The Brooklyn-based prepare dinner and cookbook creator (her newest, Something from Nothing, got here out November 2025) is at all times consuming her approach by means of the metropolis, however that does not imply she’s preventing for a seat at the most hyped TikTok spots or dime-a-dozen clubstaurants which might be at present crowding Manhattan’s scene. “Going to a restaurant, for me, is about whether the food tastes good, of course, but also the feeling and the vibe and like, Do I want to support that business?,” says Roman. “What New York really needs are the quirky, homespun, independently owned, hyper-specific places with a point of view. That’s how I want to eat.”
This winter, we followed Alison around Brooklyn, stopping at three of her all-time favourite locations to eat. “Restaurants are very personal and nostalgic for me,” she notes. One, she discovered by likelihood and now recurrently returns to; one other reminds her of when she first moved to New York; a 3rd is just the good reply, she says, to the everlasting query: Where ought to we go tonight?
Below, Roman shares her three favourite spots in Brooklyn, New York, and what to order at every.
Must-order: Clam toast
Hart’s is a quintessential neighborhood restaurant—it is good for fogeys and good for a date and good for buddies and good for once you’re by your self. It’s form of at all times the reply to, Where ought to we go tonight? And that is more and more uncommon, like, particularly since you possibly can most likely get in. The menu adjustments all the time, but it surely’s extremely seasonal. You can go as soon as every week and at all times have one thing completely different. It’s fairly vegetable and protein-forward, fairly mild. It’s how I might prepare dinner if I labored in a restaurant. The one factor they at all times appear to have is the clam toast. They’re principally clams in white wine with garlic and chili and completed with parsley. And then that entire pot is poured on prime of some very nice, thick, crusty bread that is rubbed with garlic. There’s additionally celery in there, which, at all times jogs my memory of stuffing, like, the soaked bread, the butter and celery and garlic, that is most likely why I prefer it a lot.
Must-order: Pho and all the things on the starters menu