After nearly three months in this amazing city with too many Shake Shack burgers, too many Five Leaves pancakes and too many cocktails, I am almost fed up (almost!). This is why a dinner at this fairly new Japanese restaurant a few weeks back did me very good, so good that after a delicious serving of ramen one night, we had to come back a few days after to get a taste of the Japanese breakfast.

With this place, chefs Tara Norvell and Yuji Haraguchi aim to give New Yorkers a taste of a more healthy kitchen. In the morning, the place is named Okonomi and serves a traditional Ichiju Sansai set meal for breakfast, and in the evening it shifts to Yuji Ramen serving ramen. The breakfast (pictured) consists of five small servings, a bowl of miso soup and a bowl of rice with an optional egg. I would have imagined eating fish and rice in the morning feeling weird (I cherish my oatmeal and fruit highly) but it was surprisingly normal and tasted great. The room is tiny – seats about 8 people at a time – and you feel like you’ve just entered a private living room somewhere in Japan. The menu which changes daily is handwritten and whenever someone leaves the place, many ‘thank yous’ are given to the kitchen. Both times I’ve been by, almost all of the other guests looked Japanese, which adds even more to the authenticity of the place.  

When I went by a couple of days after our feast to take some photos of the place, I had a chat with Tara and she explained how one of the ideas behind this place is to minimize food waste. They use the whole fish, the bones go into a broth and the menu changes daily after what’s available. Before opening up the place earlier this year, Tara was a chef at Bushwick’s pizza-hipster-haven Roberta’s and Yuji was running a successful ramen pop-up noodle bar inside Wholefoods whilst supplying a bunch of the city’s restaurants with seafood. Their love for Japanese food and their excellent sense of style (they redid the entire room themselves!) shine through, and the location on Ainslie Street in Williamsburg is perfect with a bunch of nice cafés and other good restaurants near by. And just look at the place. Japan is next on my list (I wish!).

Okonomi / Yuji Ramen
150 Ainslie St.

To be honest, I went to Glasserie because of the pretty walls. Then I had dinner, and now I think it might be one of my favorite restaurants in NYC so far. Those chefs with Mediterranean backgrounds sure know what they’re doing!

You will find Glasserie in the northernmost part of Greenpoint in Brooklyn, just a creek and a bridge from Queens. Every New Yorker I’ve talked to about this place has looked at me with surprise that I would go all the way out to Greenpoint, where subways are few and streets somewhat quiet, but Greenpoint is actually one of my favorite areas of Brooklyn. Mostly because of the good cafés and restaurants, but also because of the quietness.

Glasserie serves Mediterranean food drawing inspiration from both the Middle East and southern Europe, and most of the meals are designed for sharing. We were four people for dinner, and we ordered three starters, three main course plus two desserts. We were lucky enough to be treated with some extra dishes that the chef wanted us to try (thank you!) and left the table more than satisfied. We probably should have stopped at some point, but everything was so good, it was impossible! The menu changes quite often, and we had some delicious servings of Yellowfin Crudo with watermelon; squash kataif pastry, goat cheese and okra; lamb rib with fresh corn polenta and manchego just to name a few. My stomach is rumbling writing this post, that dinner was amazingly good! Every flavour of the ingredients, all fresh from farms, was something else and it tasted like no kind of Mediterranean food I’ve ever had before. At Glasserie, their goal is to cook with intuition and they always consider how much technique and seasoning the products need to be elevated to manipulate the products the least. I think that’s a pretty good ambition to have working with food!

Given the quality of the food, prices at Glasserie are extremely reasonable, the servers were beyond friendly and there was almost a small party going on there on a Tuesday night (that’s NYC for ya!). Booking a table is a good idea, and if you find yourself hungry for a tasteful dinner in Brooklyn, I’d definitely recommend this place. There are so many places I have yet to discover in NYC, but I will need to go back here before we leave, that’s for sure. And not just because of those pretty walls!

Glasserie
95 Commercial St.