Brooklyn / Red Hook
Red Hook
Restaurants
No subway, one main street, and a barbecue joint with a Michelin Bib Gourmand. Thirteen places worth the trip, and how to get there.
Checking which of these 13 kitchens are open right now…
- 13 verified places
- 1 Michelin Bib Gourmand
- oysters at $1
- 0 subway stations
The short version
- Best overallHometown Bar-B-Que — the only Bib Gourmand in the neighbourhood. Half a pound of brisket, $20. Closed Mondays, and closed early if it sells out.
- Best roomRed Hook Tavern — a $34 dry-aged burger in a room that looks like 1950 and doesn’t feel like a set.
- Best valueRed Hook Lobster Pound at 4pm — $1 oysters and $5 Narragansett, Monday to Friday, dine-in only.
- Best with a viewBrooklyn Crab — three floors looking at the harbour, and $1 oysters of its own from 3pm.
- The local moveCome by ferry, eat early, and finish at Sunny’s — live music every night but Monday, 8 to 10.
Want a drink deal first? → Carroll Gardens happy hours, twenty minutes up Van Brunt
The best restaurants in Red Hook are Hometown Bar-B-Que at 454 Van Brunt, which holds a Bib Gourmand in the MICHELIN Guide and sells brisket by the half pound at $20; Red Hook Tavern, where the dry-aged burger is $34 and the bone-in strip is $130; Red Hook Lobster Pound, whose Maine roll runs $41 and whose weekday happy hour puts oysters at $1; Brooklyn Crab on Reed Street, three storeys of harbour view with a 1.25lb Dungeness steampot at $58; and The Good Fork Pub, where the Korean fried chicken is $16. Here is the thing nobody tells you first, so we will: Red Hook has no subway station. Not one. The closest is Smith–9th Streets, about twenty minutes on foot, and everything else is the B61 bus, the NYC Ferry, or a car. That single fact shapes the whole neighbourhood — it is why the rents let a barbecue pit and a key lime pie shack survive next to a $130 steak, and it is why you should check hours before you travel rather than after. We have put the getting-here detail below the map, and we have been honest about the four places on this page that publish no hours at all.
At a glance
Sit-down rooms first, then the counters, then the two places to drink. Tap a number on the map to place any of them.
| Restaurant | Known for | Best for | Hours | $ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hometown Bar-B-Que | Texas-style brisket, Bib Gourmand | The one thing to eat in Red Hook | Tue–Sun from noon | $$$ |
| Red Hook Tavern | Dry-aged burger, dark wood, no gimmicks | Dinner you would cross the borough for | Seven days, dinner from 5pm | $$$ |
| Red Hook Lobster Pound | Maine-style lobster roll | Cheapest oysters in the neighbourhood | Seven days from noon | $$$ |
| Brooklyn Crab | Crab by the pot, water view | Groups, and a long afternoon | Daily from noon, late at weekends | $$$ |
| The Good Fork Pub | Korean-American pub food | A late one on Van Brunt | Seven days, midnight close | $$$ |
| Bar Mario | The newest room on Van Brunt | Curiosity, if you are already here | Not published | $$$ |
| BAKED | Brownies, cakes, coffee | Breakfast, and only breakfast | Daily from 8am | $$$ |
| High Beam Coffee | Local roaster | A coffee between stops | Not published | $$$ |
| Mark’s Red Hook Pizza | Neighbourhood slices | The cheap end of Van Brunt | Not published | $$$ |
| Brooklyn Ice House | Dive bar that feeds you | Cheap, if Hometown has sold out | Not published | $$$ |
| Steve’s Authentic Key Lime Pie | Key lime pie, since 1990 | Dessert with a harbour view | Daily, but weather-dependent | $$$ |
| Sunny’s Bar | The bar the whole neighbourhood defends | After dinner, every night | Seven days from noon or 3pm | $$$ |
| Botanica at Widow Jane | Bourbon distillery with a garden bar | A weekend afternoon | Friday to Sunday only | $$$ |
Map: where these 13 restaurants are
Almost all of it is one street. Van Brunt runs south from Hamilton Avenue to the water, and twelve of these thirteen are on it or one block off it.
Pins are address-derived. The NYC Ferry pier is at the foot of Conover Street by the Fairway building, a five-minute walk from the Van Brunt row.
Where to sit down and eat
The six rooms worth planning an evening around. Five publish their hours; one does not, and we say which.
Hometown Bar-B-Que Open now
The reason most people make the trip, and the only place in Red Hook carrying a Bib Gourmand in the MICHELIN Guide. Brisket is $20 the half pound, spare ribs $16 the half pound, the brisket sandwich $18, mac and cheese $7 small or $12 large. If you want the thing people photograph, that is the beef rib at $40 a pound — order by weight, not by name, or you will end up with the $32 char siu baby backs by accident, which is a fine mistake but a different meal. It is counter service, first come first served, and no reservations. The Honest Caveat is printed on their own site and it is not decoration: they serve until 9pm or until we sell out, and on a good Saturday that is a lot earlier than 9. Get there before 6 if you have a specific cut in mind. Their online ordering is Industry City only — in Red Hook you turn up in person.
hometownbbq.com · See our best BBQ in NYC
Red Hook Tavern Open now
The burger is $34 and it is worth having the argument about. Dry-aged, thin, griddled, served with a wedge of iceberg, and it is the dish that made this room a destination rather than a neighbourhood option. The rest of the menu goes further than the burger suggests — a 45-day dry-aged bone-in New York strip at $130, steak tartare $26, whole grilled branzino $50. The room is genuinely handsome and, unusually for a place doing this bit, does not feel like a film set. Open seven nights. Reservations for parties up to eight go live on OpenTable two weeks out, and walk-ins are first come first served. The Honest Caveat: their hours page lists lunch Thursday to Sunday but their menu page calls it the weekend lunch menu, so if you are travelling for a Thursday lunch, ring first.
Red Hook Lobster Pound Open now
The rolls are the headline and the prices are steep — $41 for the 4oz Maine, $51 for the 6oz, $41 for lobster mac. The actual reason to put this on your list is the happy hour, which is genuinely good and almost nobody outside the neighbourhood knows about it: Monday to Friday, 4 to 6pm, $1 oysters, $5 Narragansett draft, $5 rose and chardonnay by the glass, $10 frozen cocktails. The Honest Caveat, in their own words: dine-in only, no takeout, and it does not run on weekday holidays. One more thing worth knowing, because it says something about how carefully this website is kept — three of their own pages currently give three different messages about the outdoor shack, all of them dated in the past. Treat the patio as a maybe and the indoor room as the plan.
redhooklobster.com · See our best lobster rolls in NYC
Brooklyn Crab Open now
Big, loud, tri-level and pointed at the harbour, with mini-golf and cornhole downstairs. Judge it for what it is: this is where you take six people on a warm afternoon, not where you go for a quiet dinner. A 1.25lb Dungeness steampot is $58, oysters $19 for six and $36 for a dozen, the lobster roll $38. The Local Move is the happy hour, which is new and not widely known: Monday to Friday, 3 to 6pm, $1 oysters, $10 peel-and-eat shrimp, $6 beers, $10 margaritas and $3 off specialty cocktails. Not honoured on holidays. The Honest Caveat: the hours above are explicitly the spring and summer schedule on their own site, and they will change in the autumn — and because most of the good seating is outside, a grey day takes most of the point away.
The Good Fork Pub Open now
The Good Fork was a Red Hook institution for years; it trades now as The Good Fork Pub, and the name change is not cosmetic — this is pub food done properly rather than the old tasting-plate restaurant. Korean fried chicken $16, Korean cheesesteak sandwich $20, smashburger $19, breakfast hash $16 at weekends. The single most useful fact about this place, and the one that will save you a wasted trip: the doors open at 4pm on weekdays but the kitchen does not start until 5:30. Turn up at half four Monday to Friday and you are drinking, not eating. Weekend brunch exists on the menu but no brunch times are published anywhere, which is a gap on their end, not ours. Midnight close seven days makes it one of the two late options here.
Bar Mario
The newest thing on the street, in the space that was Fort Defiance for a decade. We are including it because New York City health department records show it inspected in June 2026, so it is unambiguously open and trading — but we are including it with a warning, because it publishes almost nothing. No website. No menu online. No hours anywhere. OpenTable still carries it as Italian, casual dining, in the $30-and-under band, and still, oddly, flags it as coming soon. What we will not do is invent a price or a schedule to fill the gap. If you are already on Van Brunt, walk past and look in. If you are travelling specifically, ring first. We will rewrite this card the moment they publish something.
See our best Italian restaurants in NYC
Counters, coffee and pie
The all-day end of Van Brunt. Three of these five publish nothing at all — we have flagged each one rather than guessing.
BAKED Open now
Between Wolcott and Dikeman, and for years the default first stop of any Red Hook morning. The baking is the draw — this is a proper bakery that also does coffee, not a coffee shop that also sells cake. The Honest Caveat is the closing time and it catches people constantly: 4pm Monday to Thursday, 5pm Friday to Sunday. If your plan involves an afternoon coffee here after a long lunch at the Tavern, the plan does not work on a Tuesday. They publish no prices on their site, so we are not quoting any.
High Beam Coffee
A roastery two doors down from BAKED, and the other option if you want coffee on Van Brunt without queueing. It is registered with the city as High Beam Coffee Roastery and was inspected in March 2026, so it is operating — but it has no reachable website and publishes no hours or prices anywhere we could find. That is increasingly normal for small Brooklyn roasters who run everything through Instagram, and it is fine if you live here and useless if you do not. Treat it as a bonus if it is open when you walk past, not as a fixture of your itinerary.
See our best coffee in NYC
Mark’s Red Hook Pizza
Directly across from Red Hook Tavern, which makes it the obvious answer when the Tavern has a two-hour wait and you have a hungry group. City inspection records put it at 326 Van Brunt with a June 2026 inspection, so it is trading. Beyond that it publishes nothing — no site, no hours, no prices — and we are not going to guess at a slice price to make this card look tidier. Walk past and read the window.
See our best pizza in NYC
Brooklyn Ice House
The dive end of the street: cheap beer, a short list of smoked meat sandwiches, a back yard. It is the sensible fallback on the Saturday when Hometown runs out of brisket at half five, which happens. City records show an April 2026 inspection at 318 Van Brunt, so it is open for business; the website is gone and nothing is published, so we cannot tell you when it opens or what it charges. That is genuinely how a lot of Red Hook operates, and pretending otherwise would not help you.
See our best dive bars in NYC
Steve’s Authentic Key Lime Pie Open now
Down at the end of Van Dyke by the water, and one of the few genuinely singular things in New York: a shack that has been making one dessert since 1990. The Swingle — a frozen four-inch pie dipped in chocolate on a stick — is the order. The Honest Caveat comes from them, verbatim: our hours can vary day-to-day depending on the weather. We are open until AT LEAST the hours posted, but we might be staying open later. So the times above are a floor, not a ceiling, and they ask you to call to confirm. They publish no prices anywhere on their own site, only sizes, so any figure you see quoted elsewhere is a delivery app’s number with fees baked in.
keylime.com · See our best desserts in NYC
A drink with it, or after it
Red Hook is a two-stop neighbourhood. This is the second stop.
Sunny’s Bar Open now
Not a restaurant, and on this page anyway, because the correct shape of a Red Hook evening is dinner on Van Brunt and then this. It is a bar of the kind New York keeps losing, on a street that still looks like the waterfront it was. The thing to actually plan around is on their own site: live music from 8 to 10pm every night except Monday, with a published calendar. Get there for the start of a set, not the end of one. One correction to the folklore, because we checked: cash-only is repeated everywhere about this place and it is not stated anywhere on their own site. Bring cash if you like, but do not treat it as gospel.
Botanica at Widow Jane Open now
The Widow Jane distillery runs a bar called Botanica in a garden behind the building, and the crucial detail is that it is weekends only — Friday from 5pm, Saturday and Sunday from 2pm, closed Monday to Thursday. Plenty of people walk down Conover on a Wednesday expecting otherwise. Tours are $27 a head, capped at ten guests, Friday at 4pm and Saturday and Sunday at 1, 3 and 5; private weekday tours are $37. Book by email, because their phone is unstaffed at weekends — their own instruction, not ours. Note their site gives the address as 218 Conover while the city’s records list the bar at 220; it is the same building, and you will see the sign.
Red Hook restaurants: FAQ
How do you get to Red Hook without a subway?
There is no subway station in Red Hook. The three ways in are the NYC Ferry South Brooklyn route to Red Hook/Atlantic Basin, the B61 bus down Van Brunt Street from Downtown Brooklyn, or roughly a twenty-minute walk from the Smith–9th Streets or Carroll Street stations on the F and G. Driving is easy and parking is usually findable, which is unusual for Brooklyn.
What is the single best restaurant in Red Hook?
Hometown Bar-B-Que at 454 Van Brunt Street. It is the only restaurant in the neighbourhood holding a Bib Gourmand in the MICHELIN Guide, brisket is $20 the half pound, and it is closed Mondays. Go early — they serve until 9pm or until they sell out, and on busy weekends selling out comes first.
Where can you eat cheaply in Red Hook?
Red Hook Lobster Pound runs $1 oysters, $5 Narragansett draft and $10 frozen cocktails Monday to Friday from 4 to 6pm, dine-in only. Brooklyn Crab has its own happy hour Monday to Friday 3 to 6pm with $1 oysters, $10 peel-and-eat shrimp and $6 beers. Those two windows are the cheapest hour in the neighbourhood.
Is Red Hook open on Mondays?
Partly. Hometown Bar-B-Que is closed Mondays and Botanica at Widow Jane is closed Monday to Thursday. Red Hook Tavern, Red Hook Lobster Pound, The Good Fork Pub, Brooklyn Crab, BAKED, Steve’s and Sunny’s all open on Mondays. If barbecue is the point of your trip, do not come on a Monday.
Which Red Hook restaurants have a waterfront view?
Brooklyn Crab at 24 Reed Street has three floors facing the harbour and the most seating with a view. Steve’s Authentic Key Lime Pie sits at the end of Van Dyke Street on the water. Sunny’s Bar and Botanica at Widow Jane are both on Conover Street a block from the pier, though neither has a full water view from inside.
Getting here, honestly. The NYC Ferry South Brooklyn route stops at Red Hook/Atlantic Basin, which is the pleasant way in and the one to use if the weather is decent. The B61 bus runs down Van Brunt from Downtown Brooklyn and drops you in the middle of everything. On foot it is roughly twenty minutes from the Smith–9th Streets F and G, or about the same from Carroll Street, and the walk crosses the Gowanus Expressway, which is not scenic. What none of that changes is the closing times: several kitchens here shut at 9pm, and Hometown shuts when the meat runs out, whichever comes first. Four places on this page publish no hours anywhere — Bar Mario, Mark’s, Brooklyn Ice House and High Beam. We have said so on each card rather than inventing a schedule, and we confirmed all four are trading through current New York City health department inspection records. Call before you make the trip for one of them specifically.
Nearby: Carroll Gardens happy hours · Cobble Hill · Gowanus · Park Slope · all of Brooklyn
More guides: Best BBQ in NYC · Best lobster rolls · Best burgers · Best dive bars · Best pizza in NYC
