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Hadramout Restaurant
Rating Details »
- Nearest Transit:
-
Court St-Borough Hall (2, 3, 4, 5, M, R, W)
Bergen St (F, G)
Jay St (A, C, F)
- Parking:
- Street
- Accepts Credit Cards:
- No
- Price Range:
-
$$
- Attire:
- Casual
- Good for Groups:
- Yes
- Good for Kids:
- Yes
- Takes Reservations:
- No
- Take-out:
- Yes
- Waiter Service:
- Yes
- Wheelchair Accessible:
- No
- Outdoor Seating:
- No
9 reviews for Hadramout Restaurant
If you want to travel without leaving Brooklyn, this is the place to be.
I was down the street at a Birthday party at the Last Exit two drinks when myself and my two best friends who hadn't eaten all day decided to get some pizza. We were on our way down to Court street when we just walked by this place and caught the sign on the street. It was beckoning to us. We had to go in.
As soon as I walked down the steps, I felt like I was in Yemen. It was a chill and relaxing place, and the waitstaff was very hospitable. You could see the waitstaff come in and out of the kitchen with their trademark Hadramout bread. There was a diverse group of people there, all breaking bread together. But myself and my two girlfriends were noticeably the only gals in there.
The food was excellent. The Hadramout bread was delicious. We got the hummus, which was very smooth and creamy. I don't recall the names of the other dishes, but one was a fava bean dish which was excellent. We also got a garlic-y stew with meats and veggies, which was also excellent. It came out in an earthen ware and was steaming. My only complaint is that the dip and stew were a too liquid-y to be eaten with a spoon, which kind of took away from the whole eating with your hands experience.
I'm not a meat-eater, but all of the people were eating a lamb and rice dish and the salad. It looked very good and I could give up vegetarianism for a day to try it.
I don't ever have to leave the city to be transported to another country. Only in Brooklyn! Not to be cliched, again, but like Nate S. said, this really is a hidden gem.
Pardon the cliche, but a real hidden gem. We were a little bit unadventourous and just had a falafel and some kind of schwarma sandwich, but even those were pretty special, being wrapped in their own house-baked bread, which was much closer to a crispier version of an Indian nan or even an Ethopian injera ... I don't know exactly how to describe it, but it made me never want to go back to an ordinary pita again.
They served us free tea and seemed perfectly happy to have us, everyone was nice, but it's definitely intended as a place for locals -- particularly cabbies and other shift workers (it's open 24h) -- and not so much for "tourists". This is NOT meant to ward you off ... in fact, it's rather refreshing that it is how it is, because otherwise it would probably be besieged by yuppies and hipsters ... but if you think of the entire spectrum of late-night Middle Eastern food in New York, it's sort of the yin to Mahmoun's Falafel's yang.
Amazing Yemeni food in Brooklyn at all hours. They say you can follow the cabbies and theyll lead you to treasures, this is certainly one of them. I love spots like this, trust me just visit and youll know what im saying. Some standouts:
The tea is sublime, its perfectly minty and subtle. Really great compliment to the meal.
The bread, always baked fresh, might be one of the best fluffy style pita breads ive ever had. There are few places in the city that will produce something of this quality at 2:30AM on a Tuesday (let alone at all)
Last week I went and accidentally ordered the lamb dish. Delicious mistake. You really cannot go wrong here.
Come here for an "I'm not in Brooklyn" experience. After a glowing recommendation from a friend, about 3am we headed here after finishing at a bar down the street. Hadramout is a Yemeni restaurant, in a basement that has beautiful murals with camels, countryside and sheep. The people in the restaurant were eating huge platters of food and everyone was speaking Arabic and very friendly to each other. Seems very authentic. Oh, and yes they had Al Jazzera on tv which I found interesting, esp when the cook came out of the kitchen, yelled something at the tv and then went back into the kitchen.
So my friend comes here religiously and always orders the chicken shawarma but they ran out. I don't really blame them it was 3 am. So a bunch of us ordered the lamb shawrarma and split a platter of hummus and babaganoush which came with a few pieces of falafel and lettuce. None us ordered platters but the chicken and fish dishes other patrons ordered looked delicious. The lamb shawrama was very thick-not a gyro like consistency, think more like pieces of flank steak beef. It came in a wrap form, 2 huge wraps (not in a pita). The bread was thin and crispy. Very delicious. The babaganoush is the best I've ever had in my life and the falafel was great too but a little too deep fried for my taste. The dips also came with massive pieces of bread which was delicious.
I must stress that you MUST drink the tea here. I don't know what's in it but it's addicting and I would go back just for it and I don't live remotely close to this establishment. Next time I come, I will be more adventurously and order one of their yummy looking meat-foul platters with fava beans.
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Their tea is the BUSINESS. I mostly munched on their warm bread and hummus/babaghanoush but everyone enjoyed their food thoroughly. I came with cynthia after a night of bacci ball and beers at a bar across the street. And this was a great way to wind down the night. The overwhelming male clientele at 3 am sitting in a small basement room with painted walls to the sound of Al Jazzera on repeat, was a pretty awesome experience. I forgot I was in Brooklyn, and that I had just learned how to play bacci ball for a brief moment.
Great late night find.
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Not sure why you'd come to Hadramout to order a falafel sandwich. Not that falafel isn't nice to eat, but I feel as though if I came to a place where no one was eating falafel, I might try, say, mulkhia to start, and perhaps lamb haleeth for dinner. Then I'd be satisfied. The foul is really good, too. I will admit, for my admonitions to try traditional dishes, that selta is an acquired taste that you might never acquire.
It really is a fine New York experience to drop by at 2:30 or 3 AM when the only other life on Atlantic Avenue is the loathsome Floyd NY. They're friendly and courteous, even if it's made fairly obvious that their primary concern isn't serving you, necessarily.
I really like this place. The food is good and a great place to go late night. But the real reason I love this place is that I had one of the most beautiful experiences here that I've had in the City.
Here's how it went down. My gf and I are coming home from Manhattan late one night, around 4am. Brooklyn Heights isn't exactly known for late night eats, so we asked our cab driver if he knew of any places open in our neighborhood. Our cab driver suggested Hadramount and said that he had just finished eating dinner there. We decided to give it a try.
The restaurant is below street level and when we entered the restaurant, we were momentarily shocked. The place was packed at 4am! Everyone was speaking Arabic and there wasn't an open table in the joint. After a few seconds, two people at a 4-person table motion for us to join them. Our table partners are a white guy and a Yemeni guy. My gf is drunk so she starts talking to them. The Yemeni guy asks us how we found the place, and when we tell him that our cab driver brought us there, he and the white guy start laughing. My gf asks them why they are laughing and the Yemeni dude tells us that he is the white guy's taxi driver and they were just out for a late night snack as well.
Anyway, fast forward through dinner. My gf and I share the falafel plate and it's great. Our tablemates, on the other hand, are enjoying a feast..soup, salad, hug plates of steaming lamb, bread and dessert.
Here comes the best part, when they finish, the white guy asks the Yemeni guy how much he owes and the Yemeni guy tells him not to worry about it, he has paid the whole bill. I am shocked, a cab driver just paid about $40 for his passengers meal!
We tell our friends good bye and my gf and I are aglow with the generosity of the cab driver. When finally ask the owner for our bill, he tells us not to worry about it...the cab driver had paid our bill as well!!
It was such a beautiful experience. Thank you to that unknown cab driver out there!
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Well, I guess this restaurant could put you off. I mean, they are in a basement, decked out quite traditional, with a nice plasma t.v. that, at the time I was there, had the satellite version of Al-Jazeera t.v. on. So it was quite a different world than the Atlantic avenue that I stepped in from. On to the food.
Well, I can't say much except for their falafel sandwich (on hardomon bread). It was quite nice. And I mean that they used a fresh-baked flatbread that I guess sort of resembles naan. But dang it was amazing. It just set off the sandwich perfectly. But I wanted to have the sandwich. I was charged $6 for it, when the menu said $4.95. I did have a cup of tea while I was waiting, and maybe it wasn't complementary, and the bill came to $6. Or maybe the owner was confused? Maybe I was confused. It is possible. At any rate, I plan on going back, ordering the same thing (ahead of time and I'll ask for the price), and see who was what.
I would like to go back and try a full-out meal, cause the other people enjoying their lunch looked happy. The meals were served on a huge silver platter, on a bed of rice, and the owner kept bringing out bowls of soup, tastey fresh flatbread, and all sorts of stuff. Mmmmm... I'm getting hungry just thinking about it.
Update: I've been back. And I solved the $6 sandwich thing. It turns out, the tea is $1, and he had charged me for the sandwich ($5) and the tea, making $6. The thing I don't get is, I went back a second time for the sandwich, making it a point to not drink any tea, and the owner saw that I was just standing there, and he said, "please, sit, sit -- have some tea", so I figured, hey, it's free tea. Well, I still got charged $6. Oh well, the sandwich was really that good.
In the mean time, I've been back for a full-fledged meal. The bread was still great, the babaganoush must have something in it like dairy maybe, because it was pretty savoury, and the lamb galab was nice, but it didn't come with rice, and so we ordered the rice, which was great. All in all, when the bill came this time (the owner was not around, evidentally), me and my friend were not charged for our tea. Go figure. I'm going with 4 stars now, because even though the falafel sandwich and the bread in particular is out of this world, the lamb was a little gamey. What should I expect? I can't with good conscious give 5 stars to a place that isn't just top notch is everything they serve (that I have ate, at least).
Don't know why I had a bad experience, but I didn't like my falafel sandwich much. Not to mention that it took almost 20 minutes, which is a bit slow for takeout.
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