Marlow & Sons is a beloved Williamsburg eatery where farm-fresh small plates, oysters, and good vibes transform from a cozy café by day to a vibrant restaurant by night.
"Some things will always be cool. Bruce Springsteen. White t-shirts and leather jackets. Dr. Dre. The other side of the pillow. Marlow & Sons is another one of these things. It’s not trying hard to have some crazy or even particularly unique concept. Its coolness is the kind of thing that a lot of restaurants try to make happen, but this place just inherently has. Marlow feels like a clubhouse - probably because that’s actually what it was when it opened. Along with Diner (owned by the same guy), Marlow & Sons was one of the first great Williamsburg restaurants, where people who lived in the neighborhood came to hang out. These spots are located right next to each other, serve the same kind of seasonal food, and are always packed with equal numbers of locals and European tourists staying in nearby Airbnbs. The key difference between them? Marlow & Son’s Feel Good Factor comes from nothing other than the Feel Good Factor itself. While Diner is set in a tiny dining car where the servers sit down in your booth to dramatically scrawl out the menu on your tablecloth butcher paper, Marlow & Sons is relatively simple: it’s just a laid-back place to have a reliably excellent meal. photo credit: The front room is a bakery counter, mini-market, and good spot for daytime eating. Marlow & Sons is consistent, but never boring. Despite being around for over a decade, they keep things feeling fresh here with a menu that changes daily. Open starting at 8am, you can come in the morning and eat a fresh-baked biscuit breakfast sandwich or eggs with whatever vegetables are in peak season. At dinner, there are only two constants - oysters and chicken roasted under a brick. Otherwise, what you’ll eat depends on what they feel like making. Add to that the genuinely nice staff, and you get a restaurant experience that feels like you’re being cooked for by friends. Friends with good taste in music, who know a lot about wine, and how to make things like chicken liver pate and beef shoulder with black tahini. When you picture a “Williamsburg restaurant,” it probably looks and feels a lot like Marlow & Sons. And that’s because this place is the original Williamsburg restaurant blueprint. It’s now a classic, and for good reason: it’s still better than almost everything else around it. White T-shirts and leather jackets optional, but recommended. Food Rundown Oysters Marlow & Sons’ raw bar, like the entire menu, changes daily to keep things interesting. The oysters are always fresh and delicious, and the mignonette is perfect. Appetizers There’s always lots of produce-focused stuff in this part of the menu, and it’s usually always great. If there are two of you, we’d recommend going heavy on this section and then adding a protein entree to split. Brick Chicken The one item that’s permanently on the menu, the Brick Chicken is something Marlow & Sons has rightly become known for. Beef Shoulder The Marlow & Sons team also operates the butcher shop a couple storefronts down, Marlow & Daughters. Which is to say: whatever meat they have available is probably great. Recently, we had an excellent beef shoulder. Biscuit With Egg, Cheese, And Sausage Like the dinner menu, the breakfast menu is short and sweet. The biscuit sandwich is always an option, and it never disappoints. Salmon Gravlax Marlow’s house-cured salmon is outstanding, and they give you plenty of it to load up on your choice of bagel with all the necessary accessories. Crispy Rice Bowl Fried rice, eggs, and vegetables, and whatever toppings they have figured out go especially well with those vegetables. If you enjoy a bowl of delicious things, you will enjoy this." - Katherine Lewin
"If you have a restaurant on your corner, you want it to be like Marlow & Sons. It’s been going strong since 2004, and the back dining room is cozy and dark like a cabin. This place also serves reliably excellent things like brick chicken and biscuit sandwiches. Along with its sister restaurant Diner, Marlow & Sons basically wrote the playbook on how to make a cool Williamsburg restaurant, and they’re still doing it better than all the imitators." - bryan kim, hillary reinsberg
"When you decide that you really like someone, but you aren’t quite ready to go to a place where there are white tablecloths and waiters who have really good diction, go to Marlow & Sons. This restaurant has been around for years, and it’s still the rare casual place where you can eat excellent food. Also, it feels like a little cabin in the woods that happens to have oysters and great roasted chicken." - bryan kim
"Cafe by day, raw bar and restaurant by night. This charming canteen is the favorite cool-kid-chill-spot for every meal of the day." - Franklyn
"Despite the fact that the L train is about as reliable as a candle in some light rain, Marlow & Sons makes for a compelling reason to move to Williamsburg. In the daytime, this is a cafe where you can sit and eat a bowl of granola, and at night it turns into a dimly-lit restaurant with great, unfussy versions of brick chicken and pâté. It’s some of the best food you’ll find in Brooklyn, and you won’t have to buy a stake in the place to get a table." - bryan kim, chris stang
