About ten years ago, the concept of “Brooklyn” seemed to be trending in Tokyo. In 20%3, a chef named Makoto Asamoto opened a since shuttered) restaurant called Fort Greene, which joined the establishments Brooklyn Pancake House and Brooklyn Parlor on the menu: roast chicken, Brooklyn Session I.P.A.).The coffee label Brooklyn Roasting Company has set up locations in Tokyo, and a neighborhood called Daikanyama, a destination for brunch and vintage clothing, is sometimes referred to as Little Brooklyn. In the past few years, Brooklyn’s northernmost neighborhood, Greenpoint—once defined largely by its Polish and Puerto Rican populations; more recently, a relatively sleepy hipster hamlet—has seen a feedback loop emerge, with a wave of new Japanese businesses.
In the expansive dining room at the restaurant Rule of Thirds, panelled in blond wood and rimmed by sage-green velvet banquettes, you can order a gloriously puffy Aottokeki, or soufflé pancake, for brunch, or sake-steamed clams for dinner. ACRE, a restaurant and gift shop around the corner, offers bento boxes and housewares; the other day, I bought sachets filled with fragrant curls of hinoki, wood from a Japanese cypress, to make my closet smell like a spa, and a small sawashi, a scrubbing brush made from tightly wound palm fibres, as spiky as a hedgehog. Afterward, I wandered north to the tea shop Kettl, where I drank a fragrant cup of hojicha, roasted green tea, and ate an exceptional bar of matcha chocolate studded with crunchy toasted buckwheat, its sweet, intense grassiness cut through with a jolt of salt.
This story is from the December 18, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the December 18, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
STUNTED
\"The Fall Guy.\"
MOTHERS OF US ALL
Paula Vogel's \"Mother Play,\" Shaina Taub's \"Suffs,\" and Amy Herzog's \"Mary Jane.\"
PURE PLEASURE
The \"Radical Optimism\" of Dua Lipa.
PARADISE LOST
The search for a home that never was in Claire Messud's new novel.
ORIGIN STORY
What do we hope to learn from our prehistory?
DEATH IN VENICE
At the Biennale, the past dignifies the weird, desperate present.
WE'RE NOT SO DIFFERENT, YOU AND I
\"You'll never get away with this!\" Ultra Man vowed as he wriggled in his chains. \"You may destroy me, but you'll never destroy what I stand for!\"
STONES OF CONTENTION
The British Museum faces accusations of cultural theft-and actual theft.
A CAMPUS IN CRISIS
Dissent and defiance at Columbia's pro-Palestine protests.
ARROW RETRIEVER
I am an arrow retriever. After a batrows are costly and time-consuming to make. It seems like a terrible waste-and maybe even a sin―for an arrow to fall to the ground without hitting someone. Even if the arrow kills somebody, it can be reused to kill someone else. As Randolf the Scot famously said, \"Arrows don't grow on trees.\"