Brooks Headley Loves Every Inch of His Restaurant

The new Superiority Burger is close-he swears.

- By Chris Crowley

It's early on a Friday night in Williamsburg, and one person is dancing at Union Pool. A version of the late-'70s power-pop anthem "Starry Eyes," performed by the Japanese quartet the Tweezers, plays on the speakers. "Classy as hell cover!" the set's DJ, Brooks Headley, tells me. "No one in the room is going to care about the music we're playing, which is what we want. We're just trying to have fun for ourselves and the seven of our friends that actually show up."

Headley, in loose-fitting work pants and a baggy sweatshirt, is here mostly because he likes to keep busy. "If I'm not working, I go insane," he says. "For me, not having a 16-hour-a-day kind of job made me go a little batty." Headley has been filling his hours waiting for Superiority Burger to reopen. The original incarnation of his vegetarian counter spot, a 240-square-foot white-tiled hole-in-the-wall on 9th Street near Tompkins Square Park, closed for good in November 2021, a few months after Headley announced he was moving the restaurant to a far larger location a block and a half away.

The first Superiority Burger opened in 2015 and came together in 11 weeks. To make it happen, Headley and his partners used whatever equipment was available, like a half-size oven that either baked focaccia perfectly or completely crapped out halfway through. A few school desks were used as tables, and if Headley had to work the ice-cream machine, he did so right next to the counter. "We outgrew the space on the first day," he says.