One Brooklyn Spot Makes Esquire's Best New Restaurants For 2019

RED HOOK, BROOKLYN — Billy Durney's Red Hook Tavern is the only spot in the borough to make it onto a ranking of the best new eateries in America.

The Red Hook spot was one of five in New York City that made it onto Esquire magazine's list of the 22 best new restaurants in America for 2019. The rest of the Big Apple's contenders were in Manhattan.

Esquire's food and drinks editor Jeff Gordinier put together the list by searching the country for the past year for the best eats and the best drinks.

Red Hook Tavern, opened by theHometown Bar-B-Que owner in July, landed at number 19 on the list. Gordinier praised the spot for a few of its lesser-known menu items, which he said stood out even more than its buzzed-about burger New York Times' critic dubbed as better than Peter Luger's.

"Allison Plumer is cooking what you want to eat when it's Friday night and you'd prefer not to ruin your appetite with overthinking," he wrote about the Van Brunt Street spot.

"The burger is very good, but what I kept daydreaming about after visiting Billy Durney's ode to the old New York were the croquettes (which tasted like ham and cheese and rye from a corner bodega by way of Barcelona), and the wedge salad with a rasher of bacon as big as a baseball bat, and the confidence of the Hemingway daiquiri—as though the bartender understands that this is a tavern, damn it, and the cocktails matter," he continued.

The Red Hook Tavern joined two Flatiron spots, a Nolita eatery and a Hudson Yards restaurant on the list. Flatiron's Rezdôra topped the city's entries at number 7 on the national list. The Italian spot on East 20th Street specializes in the country's Emilia-Romagna region.

According to Gordinier, Seven Reasons, a Latin restaurant in Washington, D.C., ranks as the very best in the country.

See Esquire's complete list.