Why This Seafood Restaurant Is The Place I'd Miss Most If I Left NYC

New York City makes it incredibly easy to fall in love. Having lived in the city for more than 20 years, I know firsthand the abundance of beauty, the rich sensory stimulation, and the pulse-quickening pace that seems to suffuse each borough, subway stop, and singular block is particularly conducive to fast infatuation. I'm talking about the magnetic appeal you find inside the restaurants, bars, diners, and cafes lining the streets and avenues. The local bistro, the dingy dive, and the corner coffee cart are all perpetually on the precipice of becoming someone's most beloved spot. My work as a food writer, reporter, and critic has led me to fall in love with more of them than most, but a few, particularly Brooklyn's Petite Crevette, endure longer than the rest.

Petite Crevette is not quite the little shrimp of a place its name might imply. Sure, the dining room is cozy, but hardly the most cramped in town. You also find the plump crustaceans in lovely bowls of chowder and cioppino, but its spirit, the X factor that gives it and other restaurants their intangible glow, is tremendous. I have been visiting for well over a decade, and it already felt familiar well before I was anything approaching a regular. It's the kind of real-deal neighborhood place that makes you feel like it's been expecting you the moment you walk in, even when there's a wait. The food is good, too, but that effortlessly welcoming warmth is vanishingly rare, even among thousands of area peers, and it's something I've infrequently experienced anywhere else in the world.

Plan to split a bottle of wine with dinner at a similarly charming little restaurant anywhere in town, and you're in for, conservatively, an extra hundred dollars. Pick even a simple Sancerre anywhere approaching a special occasion destination and watch that sum spill over into a much messier figure. Petite Crevette is one of very few NYC restaurants where you can BYOB. Not only does that save a few bucks, it also expands the theoretical wine list into infinity. A budget white blend can reduce the cost of your evening to what you might have otherwise paid for that vino alone, given the standard markup elsewhere. You can also bring the Champagne you've been saving for an impromptu celebration. I've done both, and it's just as festive either way.

That boozy benevolence is tempered a bit by Petite Crevette's unpredictable availability. It does not accept reservations, and I've run into wait times that average anywhere from zero to about 30 minutes. But, in recent years, when seemingly every promising new place cloisters its tables inside the iron clutches of booking platforms, a good, old-fashioned, real-life inconvenience actually seems refreshing. It's certainly more engaging than setting a slew of Resy notifications and wishing for the best. There are, of course, other locales near and far where you can bring your own wine or pop in unannounced. But not with the charisma, character, or intoxicating simplicity of Petite Crevette. I hope I never have to miss it.

Petite Crevette is located at 144 Union St, Brooklyn, NY 11231