While you’re visiting our home, here are our favorite places around the area.

Food & Drink

  • James Restaurant - Somewhat upscale food and drink. We enjoy going there on dates, especially for New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day when we’re in town. We recommend the black kale salad, burger, and fried chickpeas.

  • Alchemy Restaurant - A more low-key pub-style location, but still excellent food. Their burger has a shallot confit that is ridiculously good. The steak is always tasty, and the fish and chips are pretty great.

  • Nargis Bar and Grill - This place specializes in Uzbek food (from Uzbekistan which is a double landlocked country in Eastern Europe). Think Polish food with Ukranian and Middle Eastern influences. The pilaf, and kebabs (if they have them) are excellent as are the chuchvara (tiny sauteed beef and carmelized onion dumplings with sour cream).

  • Dekalb Market Hall - If everyone in your group wants to try something different, this is the place to go. It’s the basement of City Point, and has everything from Poke, Jianbing, and fried pizza to the only place to get Katz’s Deli Pastrami outside of Manhattan. The seating is find-your-own, so it can be overwhelming, but the food is all pretty tasty, and there are wine and beer stalls to pick up a drink while you check out the various food stalls

  • Sweet Polly - This is our current local spot. It’s tiny and moodily lit, has very good quality cocktails, and tasty small plates and a selection of raw oysters.

  • Grand Army Bar - Another good spot for raw oysters and clams, we discovered them when the place we’d been trying to go to was closed, and had the most amazing clam chowder. We haven’t seen the chowder since, but their bread service is very well known with fresh baked sour dough bread and some kind of umami butter flavored with seaweed or something else.

  • Mile End Deli - This is a great place for smoked meat-related foods. They can have quite a line to get in, but if you catch it right, it’s good.

  • Building On Bond - Another good place for lunch or dinner, they focus on sandwiches and tasty drinks.

  • Pacific Standard - A very relaxed slightly dive-y bar nearby.

  • Doughnut Plant - Very fancy doughnuts, and pretty a-ok coffee.

Entertainment & Nearby Sights

  • Alamo Drafthouse - If you want the “I paid a lot of money to see a movie, but at least I got to have food and drinks delivered during it” experience, definitely go here! It’s our go-to movie theater because it’s close, has reserved seating, and walking space between each row, so it’s not too crowded.

  • Brooklyn Museum - If you have time during the day, the Brooklyn Museum is full of amazing art and cultural artifacts. It’s an overall museum that has quite the art collection, but also has a large Ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian collection of items. You can take a look at Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party installation, or check out a few mummies!

  • Prospect Park - Another park built by Olmsted, it has beautiful wide meadows and lots of meandering paths. If the weather is nice, it’s a great place to take a break from the city.

  • Brooklyn Botanic Garden - The wedding is the week after the annual Sakura Matsuri festival. The cherry blossom festival is a pretty big deal for the garden, and they have a TON of cherry trees. By early May the cherry blossoms should be in full bloom, and the lilacs will be starting to bloom as well.

In (gasp!) Manhattan