About Brooklyn Of.
Before every weekend trip to a city I'd never been, I did the same thing: hours of googling for the right neighborhood to stay in, and the restaurants, bars, and cafes to fill the days with.
I'm not the traveler who books the most central area and works through the top-ten list. I'd rather have a boutique hotel in a cool neighborhood, good coffee in the morning, dinner at a place that opened last month, and a cocktail bar hidden behind a mirror in a pub. So my search history filled up with one phrase: "what is the Brooklyn of x". Odds are I'm not the only one, so we built the site that answers it.
Why Brooklyn
A "Brooklyn" is of course just a metaphor. Not because Brooklyn is still the coolest place on earth. It probably isn't. And yes, the name is a little cheesy. We went with it anyway, because it works: "What's the Brooklyn of Lisbon?" needs no explanation. Every longer version of the question does. Every big enough city has one. Not the old town, not where the hop-on-hop-off bus goes. We figured out which neighborhood it is, and made a list of the best places inside it.
How this gets made
The plan was the 20 or 30 biggest cities. Then we had too much fun and the list got out of hand. There are probably more we could add, but a city needs a certain size before this kind of neighborhood appears, and some big cities still don't have one. It took months: personal experience where we have it, far too much research where we don't, and in most markets a sense-check with local tastemakers. Meaning friends of friends who live there and have opinions.
What we feature
No chains. That's the short version. Hotels make the list if they're independent and design-led. Restaurants, cafes, bars, and shops follow the same rule: inside the neighborhood, with a twist of their own. Bonus points if it could only exist on that street, in that part of the world.
That makes some lists short. Three great bars beat five with two subpar ones. And nobody can buy a slot: nothing is sponsored, nothing is an affiliate pick.
Reach us
We list over 3,000 venues across 155 cities, so statistically a few entries are wrong right now: a photo of the wrong venue, a bar that quietly moved, a fact that makes no sense. Spot one? Write to takedown [at] brooklynof.com and we'll look into it. You're also welcome to disagree with the picks. Plenty of people will. Just don't pitch your own venue: placements aren't for sale, and this guide is independent and staying that way. Everything else: hello [at] brooklynof.com.
/ Per - Creator of Brooklyn Of