Zagat's Best of Brooklyn Guide
New York Borough's Best Dining, Nightlife, Attractions, Shopping
Zagat's new Best of Brooklyn Guide squeezes the New York borough's best restaurants, shopping, nightlife, museums and other attractions into 220 pocket-sized pages.
"The ultimate guide to Brooklyn." That's how Zagat describes its new Best of Brooklyn guide. But can you squeeze the New York borough's best restaurants, nightlife, shopping, museums and all other attractions into a slim 220-page pocket-sized book? Well, if anyone can, Zagat can.
Those 220 pages even include about 30 pages of indexes, covering the 950 places featured in the Best of Brooklyn. To get the facts and figures over with, there are 216 Brooklyn restaurants, 141 bars, clubs and other nightspots, 355 shops, 213 gourmet food stores, bakeries and similar specialty shops, and 25 museums, tourist sites and other attractions. And that does indeed add up to 950 entries, packed at least five to a page.
Now with five, six or even seven entries on a page, the write-ups are not going to be in-depth. If you're familiar with the Zagat format, you'll know what to expect. Where Zagat scores is in providing snippets from several different visitors for each and every location, providing a composite picture of what each place is like. Zagat's is a people's guide to places, rather than a critic's guide. For that reason they tend to be more reliable than a single person's point of view. If you trust the critic, then fine. But a group guide is less prone to individual error.
Opening the Best of Brooklyn at random, there's an entry for one of the few fast-food chains this writer would recommend: Chipotle. The branch of this Mexican eatery at Brooklyn Heights gets what seems to be a spot-on write-up – "not your typical fast-fooder," "comparatively healthy," and "lines out the door."
At the other end of the dining scale is Brooklyn's most popular restaurant, and top-rated for food (the two don't always go together), and that's the Peter Luger Steak House. Peter Luger also scores top in the 'Old Brooklyn' category, and naturally the best in its neighborhood of Williamsburg. It's the "holy grail of steakhouses," says one reviewer, while another praises the "buttery, perfectly marbled porterhouses." The seven short lines of the Zagat review will have your mouth watering and have you headed to 178 Broadway the same day.
In fact, Williamsburg is the neighborhood to head for if it's nightlife you're after, as it has eleven new hot nightspots listed by Zagat, including the Hope Lounge, Oulu and Wells Ales and Lagers. There's also Brooklyn's first new bowling alley for 50 years: The Gutter in Greenpoint.
The Nightlife index categorizes everything from Art Bars to Wifi Access, and does it by neighborhood as well. Dining runs from African to Vietnamese, from Best Brunch to Best Views, from Bay Ridge to Williamsburg. The top-rated places in each category are also marked on maps. You don't get the nearest subway stop or the opening hours, but hey – if you're going to pack the Best of Brooklyn into 220 pages, something's got to give.
Zagat's Best of Brooklyn Guide costs $12.95 in the USA, $15.95 in Canada and £8.99 in the UK. More details on the Zagat website.
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