This guide for hosting out-of-town guests is part of the Williamsburger Hosting Guide.

You can’t let friends visit Williamsburg without partaking in the staple of any good New Yorker’s diet: brunch. Most of the area’s many brunch venues stay open until 4, letting you and your guests sleep off last night’s hangover before filling your bellies with greasy goodness.

	Enid’s 560 Manhattan Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11222 www.enids.net Although technically in Greenpoint, Enid’s is the gold standard for neighborhood brunch. It can fill up with a long line by 1pm, so an earlier brunch gives you a better chance of avoiding a long wait. I haven’t been able to go here in years without getting a Hungry Bear combo of egg, sausage, gravy, and biscuit with a side of grits, but it’s all good. Their pint-glass bloody marys are spicy, strong, and come with a nice big stalk of celery for munching on.
	Wombat 613 Grand St, Brooklyn, NY 11211 www.thewombatbar.com Wombat’s duck hash (delivered with a friendly “and here’s your crack” by the owner) and a pulled pork sandwich keep this Australian eatery near the top of the Williamsburger brunch list. The burgers are amazing. There’s also brunch here 7 days a week, so your NYC-savvy visit-on-weekdays guests don’t miss out.
(sorry, no picture yet)	Fada 530 Driggs Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211 Yelp The combination of ham, gruyere, and a fried egg in Fada’s Croque Madame is one of the best brunch dishes in the neighborhood. Small tables make the meal into a comedy of geometry when brunch comes with coffee, water, and fresh-squeezed OJ, and that’s before you decide what everyone needs is a round of bloody marys.

This guide for hosting out-of-town guests is part of the Williamsburger Hosting Guide.

You need coffee and sweets for the energy to make it through a day of playing tour guide, and why show your guests anything but the best? Here are a few coffee joints and bakeries who stand out above the rest.

	Gimme Coffee 495 Lorimer St, Brooklyn, NY 11211 www.gimmecoffee.com It’s hard to beat Gimme Coffee for excellent drip coffees and espresso drinks. Their beans, roasted in Ithaca, are a staple in my cabinet, and make an ideal New York souvenir for coffee addicts.
	El Beit 158 Bedford Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211 Yelp The multi-thousand dollar Clover machine makes $3-4 cups of coffee that number among the best I’ve ever had. The staff is extraordinarily friendly and seems to truly enjoy explaining their new machine to gawking newbies. Go here for a cup of coffee that will surprise even the most experienced coffee fans.
(sorry, no picture yet)	Fortunato’s 289 Manhattan Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211 Yelp This old-school Italian bakery serves up cannoli and other pastries. A great place to send your parents by themselves, as the staff is much friendlier to people over 40. It’s also one of the few places not populated by a homogenous crowd of 20-somethings.
(sorry, no picture yet)	Sette Pani 602 Lorimer St, Brooklyn, NY 11211 Yelp Sette Pani’s got fresh homemade chocolates and a wide variety of Italian desserts. Reliable and still inexpensive, I love their single-serving tiramisu cups and the pear tarts.

This guide for hosting out-of-town guests is part of the Williamsburger Hosting Guide.

Williamsburg is one of New York’s dream foodie neighborhoods, where you can get pretty much any world cuisine. Especially Thai. If you’ve got out-of-town visitors, it’s great to show them culinary experiences they won’t get at home, and ideally without spending too much of the money you need for rent.

	Fette Sau 354 Metropolitan Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211 Yelp Fette Sau is the first place anyone staying with us ends up. There’s a euphoria in going up to the counter, asking for a platter for 4, and knowing you’ll get a huge variety of delicious, unexpected meats for around $20/person. The barbecue smell lingers in your clothes for a long time, so expect to continue craving a return visit for a while, and don’t wear anything you don’t expect to wash soon.
	La Piazzetta 442 Graham Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211 www.lapiazzettany.com Photo from www.lapiazzettany.com Italian food done right. The antipasto platter and any of the pasta dishes are big favorites, and the wine list is inexpensive and good. The experience falls into the frequently seen upscale Williamsburg Italian style, but with a friendlier attitude than Bamonte’s and better food than Giando’s. I tend to make reservations here, although I’m sure I’ve ever really needed them.
	Zenkichi 77 N 6th St, Brooklyn, NY 11211 Yelp A little upscale and potentially too adventurous for some visitors, this hidden-away gem serves 10-course Japanese tasting menus in private curtained booths. The sake tasting flights are exquisite, if again, not cheap.
	Queen’s Hideaway 222 Franklin St, Brooklyn, NY 11222 www.thequeenshideaway.com I remain deeply in love with the always-changing menu at Queen’s Hideaway, up in Greenpoint. A great destination for adventurous diners, as you never really know what you’re going to get until you arrive. Reservations are a good idea here.
(sorry, no picture yet)	Fada 530 Driggs Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211 Yelp Fada serves dinner late into the night, and the welcoming French bistro atmosphere and attention to good food makes this a prime choice to bring guests. The moules du jour (mussels) are always a safe bet, but nothing on the menu disappoints. If you’re good at planning ahead, you can call at least one day in advance, and they’ll prepare bouillabaisse for a minimum of 4 people.

Scarf For Two (The Black Apple)

After months of favorites-list marking and bemoaning the empty spaces on our white(ish) walls in our new(ish) high-ceilinged if not alll that large apartment, we spent most of this rainy Sunday shopping away on Etsy.

I’ve bought a few things there before, a print and some jewelry, but mostly I’ve just clicked around, saving copies of prints to put in my computer desktop background rotation, where they would lie in wait for the eventual day I’d give in and drop some money on the ones I really liked a lot. And putting painting after print after t-shirt into my favorites list (represented by a cute little heart).

Just in the interface, you can tell the people behind Etsy really care about getting their artists’ goods out to the public, including some very nice shopping features like interviews with artists, galleries (public lists by users), and the innovative if eventually unhelpful color-based shopping path. They have some performance issues at times (we seemed to have abnormally slow page load times around 6-7pm), but considering their relative newness as a tech company and image-content-heaviness, this isn’t all that shocking. If Etsy can figure out how to do Amazon-style recommendations with their content, they could have something truly amazing as opposed to just a great place to buy art.

After hours of deliberation (there’s a ton of stuff on Etsy!), we narrowed it down to a bunch of pieces that really struck us as befitting our styles. A not insignificant but fortunately also not ridiculous amount of money later, we walked off with (technically, sat around and waited for) a nice big pile of art to brighten up those sterile walls.

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On the end of North 8th lies the official entrance to Williamsburg’s East River State Park, a small space of grass and concrete providing a much-needed green space along the East River.

The last time I was here, a few years ago, I had to sneak in through a hole in the fence, and it was just an empty space filled with rubble and unkempt brush. Now, it’s a park with hundreds of people lounging and admiring the East River and the Manhattan skyline view. Sometimes, progress is awesome.

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