when you want, where you want.
Where to Eat in February
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 that 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’s flown too far under the radar). This month: A hot pop-up goes permanent, two well-liked neighborhood spots expand, and a new queso hut looks like it may be the first of many.
Entre Nous (Clinton Hill)
On Saturday at Entre Nous, the windows were steamy, the bar was busy, and Len’s “Steal My Sunshine” was in the air (though there was none to be taken, given the season). Opened by the owners of Fort Greene’s Fradei, this restaurant occupies a comparatively roomy, long corner space on a quiet side street. Inside, there are lots of mirrors, a standing cabinet stocked with wine, and tables that aren’t all crowded together. The proper move is to post up at the bar, order a bottle of mineraly Muscadet from Complémen’Terre, and stick to this plan: Start with a seafood plateau, or cheese like a bloomy sheep’s milk called Brebirousse. You’ll be very happy if you order nothing but the choux farci, which is worth seeking out entirely on its own. It’s stuffed with strikingly orange steelhead trout, flaky and pristine. A touch of tarragon and a pool of beurre blanc zip it up. Don’t forget to ask for bread and a spongy baba au rhum for dessert. —Chris Crowley
Wayward Fare (Prospect Heights)
After a few seasons of uninspired openings on Vanderbilt Avenue, chef Akhtar Nawab’s new Pan-Mediterranean spot brings some heat to this particular restaurant row (one that includes Nawab’s previous establishment, Alta Calidad). Our waiter explained the home country of each spice, which was helpful since the cooking takes an expansive view of the Mediterranean, stretching throughout the Silk Road. A handful of dishes are cooked in a familiar wood-fired oven; the best to come out of it was roasted cabbage served with crunchy puffed freekeh. Crusty, laminated bread coming from the oven also sets Wayward Fare apart from similar spots like Sawa and Theodora. You have to order three meze with the bread, but I wish I could’ve just had a vat of the whipped farmer’s cheese. —Zach Schiffman
Field Guide (Williamsburg)
Field Guide is an ambitiously botanical-sounding name for a restaurant that turns out to be a narrow strip in a mixed-use brick building on Williamsburg’s far west coast. But chef Tim Meyers (ex–Eleven Madison Park, among others), green-thumbed, is coaxing fruit and flowers out of the concrete. The priors show. In an age, and a neighborhood, more defined by more casual cooking — and to be fair, Meyers worked at Roberta’s too — Field guide is what I like to think of as a “comma menu”: a thinly sliced tomato salad turned out to be a kind of flat bouquet, accented with “apple, coriander, rose,” and a hefty lamb shank was dialed up with “cedar, blood orange, carrot, miso.” Meyers has a knack for surprising flavor combinations, and his cooking demonstrates an admirable polish. I’m not sure I’d call it a casual Wednesday night spot, but the spotlight has so far dodged the restaurant; for special occasions it’s currently both surprising and surprisingly bookable. Bonus points for Mackenzie Khosla’s excellent wine list, whose pricing for library bottles is too good to last — a friend in wine whispered to me that it’s largely sourced from collectors on consignment, so prices are closer to retail than the usual 300 percent restaurant markup. —Matthew Schneier
Ha’s Snack Bar (Lower East Side)
On a worn stretch of Broome Street that still looks like the “downtown” older New Yorkers love to rhapsodize, Sadie Mae Burns and Anthony Ha have found a permanent landing spot for their once-roving pop-up project. It’s a home, but it is a starter home: There are a handful of tables, some bar seats, and stools lined up against a narrow shelf. The wide-open kitchen is smaller than most studio apartments’ and I counted six workers, total, including Burns, Ha, and the dishwasher, whose station is directly behind the small bathroom. What the restaurant lacks in grandeur, it makes up for with charm, skill, and ambition. A chalkboard lists the surprisingly large menu of French-Vietnamese-LES cooking: A small stack of blood pudding vol-au-vent, de-shelled snails in still-bubbling tamarind butter, slabs of rough-cut pâté topped with slivers of chile. “Snack Bar” is a misnomer since whole porgies and pork glazed in caramelized fish sauce were among the larger options on the night I stopped by, which I did as an early walk-in since the Resy page is a testament to non-availability. They couldn’t have been nicer. This is a restaurant you root for. —Alan Sytsma
Wayne & Sons (East Village)
Crunchy tacos are the default here, where corn tortillas are fried daily to become shells and sturdy totopos. The restaurant is about a block away from another Tex Mex favorite, Yellow Rose, but there’s room for more than one queso saloon in this town. Wayne’s cheese dip is spiced and perfectly goopy. Soft, smoked-tinged pinto beans and tender pulled pork suggest barbecue, and are extra comforting when they’re smothered with cheese inside a quesadilla. Its crunchy beef taco is a paragon of the form, an unabashedly greasy vessel of picadillo, queso, chipotle sauce, and a sprinkle of diced tomato with onion. It seems like Wayne & Sons is poised for expansion — one of the owners was previously a Tacombi founder — and they’ve already taken to bottling their two hot sauces, one green and vibrant, the other like a tangy blended salsa matcha, in bear-shaped bottles that will soon be available for sale. But until there’s one in every neighborhood, the quaint seven-seat bar and handful of tables off 14th street will have to do. —Tammie Teclemariam
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