Strange Delight

The Best New Restaurants in New York City

"In the way that, as a Netflix celebrity once said, “mac and cheese is something that can actually be so personal,” so can a seafood tower. At Strange Delight, the bounty of the sea can be plated for one: a $35 order of oysters, shrimp cocktail, remoulade, and crudo is evenly portioned for a solo diner. It even comes with crackers and bread. But the point of this buzzy NOLA-inflected joint on one of the yuppiest corners of Brooklyn (down Lafayette Avenue from the Brooklyn Academy of Music; a shrimp tail’s throw away from Greenlight Bookstore) is that you come here with pals for a convivial night in the pastel, 1950s Americana-tinted dining room. Besides, you’ll need a team to sample all the ways the kitchen serves oysters—cold, charbroiled, fried, “spicy BBQ,” and Rockefeller ($12–$64, depending on the preparation and quantity); and of course, the towers come in for-groups iterations as well, though you’ll need at least two of the $120 option to serve a hungry crowd of eight, as my friends and I learned when we celebrated a special occasion one June evening, complementing the three-tiered serving stands with crab dip ($35) and catfish nuggets ($24). But if you’re in the neighborhood and pop in alone (if the dining room is full, grab a spot at the open kitchen’s counter), you’ll have plenty of options in the sandwich menu, which stars more oysters, shrimp, and catfish, as well as mushrooms for the vegetarians ($24–$28)—and of course the personal seafood tower. —Matt Ortile, associate editor" - CNT Editors