A Brooklyn Girl’s Guide To Sunday: Dinner at The Smile

Everyone has a few Sunday places – favorite coffeeshops, brunch spots, afternoon resting places. There are some restaurants that seem to be specifically designed for either the summer sunday evening or the winter version. These are places with either excessive outdoor seating, wooden benches and iced tea in jars, or places with dark wood panelling, fire places and juniper berries in the corner.

Now that the weather is changing, it’s time to start transiting from summer to winter spots. The best cold-weather places are the ones you want to curl up in all day in an enormous sweater with apple cider, hat, scarf, and all. The Smile is one of those places. Yes, everybody loves it, everybody goes there, the line for sunday brunch can be not-that-fun, but there’s a reason everybody loves it. And there’s an easy solution to the brunch wait problem: dinner. Sunday night is, okay fine, usually reserved for being at home, but you can go to The Smile in your sweatpants, your sweater, and the boots you usually only wear to the gym. The food is the kind of quality that makes you feel like your entire self – body and soul – are being nourished entirely. You kind of feel like if you could you would be glowing a deep amber color around the edges… And it’s fast and cozy, the kind of place where you can either curl up for two hours or leave after half an hour. Diners choice. If the ambience doesn’t woo you, the clientele just might; I once saw the actor who plays Evan Chambers on “Greek” in there on a Sunday night, and that was enough for me.