Brooklyn

Discovering Brooklyn

Brooklyn is not Manhattan’s sidekick. It is a city within a city — 2.7 million people spread across neighborhoods so distinct from one another that crossing a single avenue can feel like entering a different country. If Brooklyn were its own city, it would be the fourth largest in the United States, bigger than Houston, bigger than Philadelphia. It was, in fact, an independent city until 1898, and that spirit of self-sufficiency has never left. Brooklyn does not look across the East River at Manhattan with envy. It looks across with the quiet confidence of a borough that knows the best pizza, the best parks, the best street art, and the best creative energy in New York are already on its side of the bridge.

The geography of Brooklyn is a long westward-facing waterfront curving from Greenpoint in the north down through Williamsburg, DUMBO, Brooklyn Heights, Red Hook, and Sunset Park before swinging east toward Bay Ridge and Coney Island at the southern tip. The waterfront has been radically transformed over the past two decades — industrial piers and rotting warehouses replaced by Brooklyn Bridge Park, the DUMBO cobblestone district, and the Williamsburg waterfront’s hotels and apartment towers. But step a few blocks inland and the character shifts entirely. Brownstone-lined streets canopied by old-growth trees. Corner bodegas with cats sleeping on the counter. Churches and synagogues and mosques within a few blocks of each other. The sound of a dozen languages on a single subway car.

What draws travelers to Brooklyn is the layering of authenticity and reinvention. Williamsburg was an industrial waterfront neighborhood, then a Hasidic Jewish community, then an artist colony, and is now a polished destination of boutique hotels and Michelin-starred restaurants — yet all of those layers still exist simultaneously. DUMBO was a wasteland of abandoned warehouses under the thundering Manhattan Bridge; today its cobblestone streets frame the most photographed view in New York City, with the Empire State Building perfectly centered in the bridge’s stone arch. Park Slope was a rough neighborhood through the 1970s; now it is one of the most coveted residential addresses in America, with brownstones selling for $3-5 million and 7th Avenue lined with independent bookshops, bakeries, and wine bars.

Brooklyn’s food scene alone justifies the trip. This is where New York’s culinary innovation happens now — not in Manhattan’s white-tablecloth restaurants, but in converted garages in Red Hook, shipping containers in Williamsburg, and family-run joints in Sunset Park’s Chinatown that serve dim sum at prices Manhattan abandoned a decade ago. The borough’s diversity means you can eat Trinidadian doubles in Flatbush for $3, hand-pulled noodles in Bensonhurst for $8, and a tasting menu in Williamsburg for $185, all within a 30-minute subway ride.

Williamsburg & Greenpoint

Williamsburg is Brooklyn’s most visited neighborhood, and for good reason — the density of restaurants, bars, shops, and street life packed into the blocks around Bedford Avenue rivals anything in Manhattan. The L train delivers you from Union Square to Bedford Avenue in a single stop under the East River, and the moment you emerge from the subway, the energy shifts. Manhattan’s glass-tower verticality gives way to low-rise warehouses, converted lofts, and streets wide enough to breathe. Bedford Avenue is the main artery, running north-south with an unbroken procession of vintage clothing shops, record stores, bookshops, coffee roasters, and restaurants. But the best discoveries lie on the side streets — tiny ramen bars on Metropolitan Avenue, natural wine shops on Grand Street, and mezcal bars tucked into former auto-body shops on Havemeyer Street.

The Williamsburg waterfront has been transformed by development, but the result is genuinely impressive. Domino Park, built on the site of the old Domino Sugar refinery, stretches along the East River with sweeping views of the Manhattan skyline, and the preserved artifacts of the refinery — massive iron syrup tanks, industrial cranes — are woven into the park’s design. On warm evenings, the park fills with picnickers, musicians, and families while the Williamsburg Bridge glows in the background. The Williamsburg Hotel’s rooftop pool bar offers the same view with a cocktail in hand, and the William Vale hotel’s Westlight bar on the 22nd floor serves what may be the single best panoramic view of Manhattan available anywhere in the city.

North Williamsburg bleeds into Greenpoint, Brooklyn’s traditionally Polish neighborhood that has become one of the borough’s most charming destinations. Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint still has Polish bakeries selling fresh paczki (filled doughnuts) and pierogi alongside newer arrivals — third-wave coffee roasters, craft cocktail bars, and some of the best casual restaurants in the borough. Greenpoint’s pace is slower than Williamsburg’s — more residential, more neighborly, with a waterfront park at Transmitter Park that offers quiet views of the Manhattan skyline without the crowds.

DUMBO & Brooklyn Heights

DUMBO — Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass — occupies a compact grid of cobblestone streets beneath the thundering approaches of the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges. The neighborhood’s transformation from industrial wasteland to one of New York’s most photogenic destinations is complete, but the original architecture remains — massive brick warehouses with arched windows, steel fire escapes, and the constant visual drama of two massive bridges overhead. The signature view is on Washington Street between Front and Water Streets, where the Manhattan Bridge frames the Empire State Building in its stone arch. This spot draws photographers and influencers at all hours, but arriving at sunrise rewards you with an empty street and golden light that the afternoon crowds will never see.

Brooklyn Bridge Park is DUMBO’s crown jewel and one of the finest urban parks built in America this century. Stretching 1.3 miles along the waterfront from Atlantic Avenue to the Manhattan Bridge, the park reclaimed six abandoned piers and transformed them into a landscape of lawns, sports facilities, playgrounds, and gathering spaces. Pier 1 has wide lawns and harbor views. Pier 2 has basketball, handball, shuffleboard, and roller skating. Pier 4 has a beach (yes, a sandy beach on the East River). Pier 6 has playgrounds, a dog run, and the excellent Fornino pizza restaurant. Jane’s Carousel, a restored 1922 fairground carousel housed in a Jean Nouvel-designed glass pavilion, sits at the water’s edge beneath the Brooklyn Bridge — it is beautiful at any hour but magical at night when it glows like a lantern against the bridge cables.

Brooklyn Heights, perched on the bluffs above DUMBO, is the borough’s oldest and most elegant neighborhood. The Brooklyn Heights Promenade — a cantilevered walkway along the bluff’s edge — offers one of the great views in New York City: the full sweep of Lower Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty, and the Brooklyn Bridge, all from a quiet, tree-lined esplanade that feels worlds away from the chaos below. The streets behind the Promenade are lined with beautifully preserved 19th-century brownstones and row houses, many dating to the 1840s and 1850s. Montague Street is the commercial heart, with restaurants, shops, and the Brooklyn Historical Society. The neighborhood is walkable, quiet, and connected to Manhattan by the 2/3 trains at Clark Street or the A/C at High Street.

Park Slope, Prospect Park & the Brooklyn Museum

Park Slope is the Brooklyn that people picture when they imagine raising children among brownstones — tree-lined streets of handsome 19th-century row houses descending the western slope of Prospect Park, with two vibrant commercial strips on 5th and 7th Avenues. Seventh Avenue is the more polished corridor, with independent bookshops (Community Bookstore is excellent), bakeries, wine bars, and restaurants serving everything from farm-to-table American to Oaxacan mole. Fifth Avenue is grittier and more eclectic, with a wider range of cuisines and price points, plus the kind of independent shops — vintage furniture, record stores, art supply — that give a neighborhood its character.

Prospect Park is Brooklyn’s 526-acre masterpiece, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux after they completed Central Park. Many New Yorkers consider it the superior work — Olmsted himself said so. The Long Meadow, a 90-acre unbroken stretch of rolling grassland, is the longest meadow in any urban park in the United States. On weekends it fills with soccer games, picnics, dog walkers, and kite flyers. The Ravine, a forested gorge with a waterfall and stream, feels genuinely wild — it is hard to believe you are in a city of eight million people while standing on the woodland trail listening to nothing but birdsong and rushing water. Prospect Park Lake allows pedal-boating in summer, and the Boathouse, a Beaux-Arts structure from 1905, hosts the Audubon Center with free nature exhibits. The park’s Bandshell hosts the annual Celebrate Brooklyn performing arts festival from June through August — free concerts, film screenings, and dance performances under the stars.

The Brooklyn Museum, on the park’s northeastern edge, is the third-largest museum in New York and one of the most important in the country. Its Egyptian art collection is world-class, the American art wing includes masterworks from the colonial period through the present, and the museum has been at the forefront of showing contemporary artists from underrepresented communities. First Saturdays — free admission from 5 PM to 11 PM on the first Saturday of each month — are one of Brooklyn’s best cultural events, combining gallery access with live music, dancing, film screenings, and a festive atmosphere. The Brooklyn Botanic Garden, adjacent to the museum, is a 52-acre oasis with a Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden, a Cherry Esplanade that erupts in pink blossoms each April, and a fragrance garden designed for the blind that is one of the most moving spaces in the city.

Bushwick, Red Hook & Brooklyn’s Outer Reaches

Bushwick is Brooklyn’s street art capital — an entire neighborhood of warehouses and industrial buildings transformed into an open-air gallery. The Bushwick Collective, centered on Troutman Street and Jefferson Street, features murals by internationally known artists alongside emerging local talent, and the works change regularly as old pieces are painted over and new commissions appear. Unlike Williamsburg’s polished sheen, Bushwick retains a raw, unfinished quality — studios occupy former factories, galleries open in shipping containers, and some of the borough’s most interesting restaurants operate out of spaces that feel halfway between construction sites and dining rooms. Roberta’s, the wood-fired pizza restaurant on Moore Street, exemplifies the Bushwick ethos — a backyard garden growing herbs for the kitchen, a radio station broadcasting from the building, and pizza that competes with anywhere in the city, all in a space that still looks like the garage it once was.

Red Hook, cut off from the subway grid and reachable by bus or bike, has a frontier quality unique in Brooklyn. The neighborhood occupies a peninsula jutting into Upper New York Bay, with views of the Statue of Liberty from its waterfront. The Red Hook Ball Fields food vendors — Central American and South American families selling huaraches, pupusas, and elote from open-air stalls on weekends from spring through fall — are a beloved tradition and some of the best street food in New York. Steve’s Authentic Key Lime Pie, operating out of a converted warehouse, sells tart, frozen-dipped key lime pies that draw devoted customers from across the city. IKEA has a massive outpost here, but the neighborhood’s character lives in its smaller operations — pioneer bars like Sunny’s, artist studios in the old warehouses, and the waterfront views that still feel like a secret.

Beyond these better-known neighborhoods, Brooklyn’s depth reveals itself the further you travel. Sunset Park’s 8th Avenue is a genuine Chinatown with dim sum parlors, herbal medicine shops, and grocery markets that rival anything in Manhattan’s Chinatown at half the price. Brighton Beach, called “Little Odessa,” is a Russian and Eastern European enclave where boardwalk restaurants serve borscht and blini with views of the Atlantic. Flatbush’s Caribbean community — primarily Trinidadian, Jamaican, Haitian, and Guyanese — has created one of the most vibrant Caribbean food corridors outside the islands themselves, with doubles, jerk chicken, oxtail, and roti available on every block along Flatbush and Church Avenues.

The Brooklyn Food Scene

Brooklyn’s food culture is not a single scene — it is dozens of overlapping worlds defined by neighborhood, immigration pattern, and price point. The common thread is quality and unpretentiousness. A $4 Trinidadian doubles from a Flatbush cart can be as memorable as a $45 entree at a Williamsburg tasting-menu restaurant, and Brooklynites understand this implicitly.

Pizza is the foundation. Di Fara Pizza in Midwood, where Domenico DeMarco hand-made every pie for over 50 years until his passing, remains a pilgrimage site — the shop continues under family management, and the square slice, with its scissors-cut basil and drizzle of olive oil, is transcendent. L&B Spumoni Gardens in Gravesend has served its famous Sicilian square — thick, airy dough with cheese under the sauce — since 1939, and the spumoni ice cream is the required dessert. Juliana’s in DUMBO, opened by Patsy Grimaldo after a legal battle cost him the Grimaldi’s name next door, serves coal-fired pies that many consider the best in the borough. For a more contemporary take, Ops in Bushwick does naturally leavened, wood-fired pies with creative toppings and an excellent natural wine list.

Smorgasburg, the open-air food market operating Saturdays in Williamsburg (at Marsha P. Johnson State Park) and Sundays in Prospect Park from April through October, gathers over 100 vendors selling everything from raclette cheese sandwiches to ube-flavored soft serve. Arrive hungry and with cash — not every vendor takes cards. The Ramen Burger, invented here, has become a pop-culture phenomenon, but the best finds are often the least hyped vendors tucked toward the edges of the market.

For sit-down dining, Brooklyn’s range is extraordinary. Lilia in Williamsburg serves handmade pasta in a converted auto-body shop — the mafaldini with pink peppercorns and the sheep’s milk ricotta agnolotti are worth the difficult reservation. Olmsted in Prospect Heights combines a backyard garden with a tasting menu that changes with the harvest. Win Son in Williamsburg reimagines Taiwanese-American food with dishes like fly’s head (ground pork with Chinese chives) and lu rou fan (braised pork over rice) that are both deeply traditional and completely original.

Getting Around & Practical Information

Brooklyn’s subway coverage is extensive but uneven. The western neighborhoods — Williamsburg, DUMBO, Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope, and Cobble Hill — are well-served by multiple lines. The L train runs east-west through Williamsburg and Bushwick. The G train, Brooklyn’s only subway line that does not enter Manhattan, runs north-south connecting Greenpoint and Williamsburg to Park Slope and beyond — it is the key connector between Brooklyn neighborhoods. The B/Q trains run south through Prospect Park to Brighton Beach and Coney Island. Wait times vary: rush hour trains run every 3-5 minutes, but late-night and weekend service can stretch to 10-15 minutes with frequent service changes.

The NYC Ferry is Brooklyn’s scenic alternative. The East River route runs from Wall Street in Manhattan to DUMBO and Williamsburg, and the South Brooklyn route connects Red Hook and Sunset Park to downtown Manhattan. At $4 per ride, it costs more than the subway, but the views of the skyline and bridges from the water are worth the premium. Citi Bike stations are scattered throughout western Brooklyn, and the waterfront greenway provides a largely car-free cycling route from Greenpoint down through Williamsburg, DUMBO, and Brooklyn Bridge Park.

Walking is the best way to experience any individual Brooklyn neighborhood — most are compact enough to cover on foot in a few hours. But distances between neighborhoods are real. Williamsburg to Park Slope is a 40-minute walk or a 15-minute subway ride. DUMBO to Bushwick is 20 minutes by train. Plan your days by neighborhood cluster rather than trying to criss-cross the borough, and you will save hours of transit time.