“I love New York, and I love the restaurants here—especially the small, weird ones,” says Alison Roman. The Brooklyn-based cook and cookbook author (her latest, Something from Nothing, came out November 2025) is always eating her way through the city, but that doesn’t mean she’s fighting for a seat at the most hyped TikTok spots or dime-a-dozen clubstaurants that are currently 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 favorite places to eat. “Restaurants are very personal and nostalgic for me,” she notes. One, she found by chance and now regularly returns to; another reminds her of when she first moved to New York; a third is simply the perfect answer, she says, to the eternal question: Where should we go tonight?
Below, Roman shares her three favorite spots in Brooklyn, New York, and what to order at each.
Must-order: Clam toast
Hart’s is a quintessential neighborhood restaurant—it’s good for parents and good for a date and good for friends and good for when you’re by yourself. It’s kind of always the answer to, Where should we go tonight? And that’s increasingly rare, like, especially since you can probably get in. The menu changes all the time, but it’s highly seasonal. You can go once a week and always have something different. It’s pretty vegetable and protein-forward, pretty light. It’s how I would cook if I worked in a restaurant. The one thing they always seem to have is the clam toast. They’re basically clams in white wine with garlic and chili and finished with parsley. And then that whole pot is poured on top of some really nice, thick, crusty bread that’s rubbed with garlic. There’s also celery in there, which, always reminds me of stuffing, like, the soaked bread, the butter and celery and garlic, that’s probably why I like it so much.
Must-order: Pho and everything on the starters menu
