There's also excellent pizza, falafel, and baklava, among foods.ĭepending on our route, we may encounter the old stomping grounds of novelist Gilbert Sorrentino (who thought Bay Ridge was pretty grim) and pass by the old workplace and house (surprisingly nice) of Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever. The best Middle Eastern restaurant in New York City is in Bay Ridge, Tanoreen, just a block from the subway. Perhaps the most notable recent immigrants have come from the Middle East Bay Ridge has both Christian and Muslim Arab populations, and attendant religious institutions, restaurants, and stores. Once known for a Scandinavian and Irish population, and later an Italian one, Bay Ridge is still represented by those ethnic groups, plus people from Greece and China. Not for nothing has the 'borough of homes and churches' moniker for Brooklyn been adapted, in the case of Bay Ridge, to 'neighborhood of bars and churches.' Today, we'd add have to add 'mosques.'

No wonder it was home to many of the Brooklyn Dodgers during the 1950s.īay Ridge, reached via the sometimes sluggish R train, has a rich variety of housing (apartment buildings, row houses), civic buildings (religious institutions, schools), theaters (most converted), retail outlets, and restaurants. Yes, Bay Ridge, along with the adjacent, conjoined neighborhood of Fort Hamilton, has lovely large homes near the waterfront, a testament to this area's longtime residential (never industrial) character. But it's so muich more, a self-contained neighborhood, with blocks both urban and semi-suburban. The substantial southwest Brooklyn neighborhood of Bay Ridge may seem a gateway to suburbia, since it is the pathway to Staten Island via the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge (starting point of the annual NYC Marathon, by the way).

Bay ridge restaurant 101