Francie

The Restaurant

Francie occupies a striking limestone-clad building at 134 Broadway in South Williamsburg, on the corner of Bedford Avenue a single block from the J/M/Z platform at Marcy Avenue. The room - sleek ash wood, exposed red brick walls, mosaic tile flooring, widely spaced tables, an oversize central bar - was designed to bring the volume of a serious midtown brasserie into Brooklyn without losing the borough's looseness. The project is the first independent collaboration between Chef-Owner Christopher Cipollone (Piora, Cotogna) and Owner-Operator John Winterman (Batard, Daniel), and it earned its first Michelin star within twelve months of opening in December 2020 - one of the fastest Brooklyn star ascents on record.

The menu is a European brasserie programme with a clean, technically careful kitchen behind it. Cipollone's handmade pastas are the room's quietest argument - the conchiglie with luscious clam sauce, the agnolotti with brown butter and sage, the cavatelli with lamb sausage - and the kitchen runs an excellent shellfish programme over snacks and first courses. The room's defining moment is the Crown of Roast Duck for two: a whole duck arrives glazed in a barley-honey lacquer, carved tableside by the captain, plated with the dark and light meat dressed separately. The duck has been written up by the New York Times, Eater, and the New York Times Magazine's Restaurant Issue, and is the reason most return tables book the restaurant. A wood-grilled prime cut, a daily fish, and a brisk vegetable programme handle the rest of the second courses.

The wine list runs around five hundred references with serious depth in Burgundy, the Rhone, Tuscany, and a thoughtful set of New York State producers - the floor sommelier team can navigate a careful by-the-glass evening or anchor a serious bottle conversation. The cocktail bar opens with a refined classic spirits programme and a small list of original cocktails built around amaro and aperitivo. Service runs at the level the menu demands - well-paced, warm without overfamiliarity, with the kind of brasserie-trained attention to detail (bread refreshed, water never empty, plates cleared on the right beat) that the borough's looser rooms rarely manage. For a Brooklyn dinner that needs to register as fully serious without forcing the relocation to Manhattan, Francie is the address.