The same principle that produces Brooklyn’s best expensive restaurants produces its best cheap ones: the borough’s immigrant communities have maintained food traditions with enough intensity that the competition for neighborhood regulars keeps quality high and prices honest. The restaurants on this guide exist because they serve people who eat there every week, not because they showed up in a food magazine.

Crown Heights: Caribbean Under $15

The Caribbean restaurants on Nostrand Avenue between Eastern Parkway and Church Avenue serve full plates — jerk chicken or oxtail with rice and peas and festival — for $12-15. The beef patties from the Caribbean bakeries in the neighborhood are $2-3 each and are one of Brooklyn’s great portable foods. A full lunch at any of the Jamaican restaurants on the avenue costs less than a sandwich at a Manhattan deli and is significantly more satisfying.

Greenpoint: Polish Under $15

Lomzynianka on Manhattan Avenue produces the best-value sit-down meal in northern Brooklyn — a full plate of pierogies, bigos, or beet soup with bread costs $12-15 and is made with the care of a restaurant cooking for a community that knows Polish food. The bakeries on Manhattan Avenue sell babka and paczki for $3-5 each. This is genuinely cheap eating in a neighborhood that has maintained its food culture against the gentrification pressure from Williamsburg to the south.

Bushwick: Mexican and Latin American Under $15

Knickerbocker Avenue in Bushwick has a concentration of Mexican restaurants serving the neighborhood’s Latin American community. Tacos at the best spots are $3-4 each. A full plate of carnitas or pollo asado with rice and beans costs $10-13. The tlayudas at the Oaxacan spots and the pupusas at the Salvadoran restaurants are both under $10 for a substantial meal.

Sunset Park: Chinese and Mexican Under $15

Sunset Park’s Chinatown along Eighth Avenue is less famous than Manhattan’s but serves genuinely excellent Cantonese and Fujianese food at prices that feel lower by comparison. Dim sum on weekend mornings runs $3-6 per plate at the banquet restaurants. The Mexican restaurants on Fifth Avenue in the neighborhood’s Latino section serve full meals for $10-14.

Bay Ridge: Middle Eastern Under $15

The Middle Eastern restaurants and grocery stores on Fifth Avenue in Bay Ridge serve hummus, shawarma, falafel, and Lebanese pastries at prices that make the same food in Manhattan look exploitative. A full shawarma plate with hummus and rice is $12-14 at the best spots. The pastries — baklava, mamoul, knafeh — are $2-4 each from the bakeries along the avenue.

Red Hook Ball Fields (Summer Weekends Only): Under $10

The Latin American food vendors at the Red Hook Recreation Area soccer fields on summer weekends serve Salvadoran pupusas ($3-4 each), Mexican huaraches ($8-10), Guatemalan food, and fresh tropical fruit drinks at prices that are among the lowest for prepared food in New York. Cash only. The food is genuinely excellent — not street food as a category but specific dishes made by people who have been making them for decades.

Also see: our free Brooklyn activities guide

Also see: our Manhattan cheap eats guide

Will

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