11 Brooklyn Shops and Restaurants to Check Out This Small Business Saturday

With the impact of the pandemic still reverberating through the local economy, this year’s annual Small Business Saturday offers an opportunity to make a dent in your holiday shopping while giving Brooklyn shops and restaurants some much needed support.

The annual nationwide event, originally started by American Express in 2010, encourages patronage of local businesses on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. This year, that date is Saturday, November 27. While the “Shop Small” events typically hosted by neighborhood organizations are largely on hold again this year, borough shops are still open (either in person or online) for gift purchases. Eateries offer a break amidst shopping and, in some cases, gifts and gift certificates.

To start you off on making a shopping list, we’ve rounded up 11 Brooklyn shops, businesses and restaurants and their owners that have been featured in Brownstoner in the last few years.

It Just Comes Natural: Three Musicians Open a Natural Wine Shop in Clinton Hill

In 2019, Brian Heiss was managing a wine shop in Fort Greene but wanted more responsibility and control. A musician with a number of years working in wine retail, he approached two musician pals, Steven Reker and Matt Nelson, who also worked in the wine business, and asked them if they wanted to open up a new natural wine shop with him. They agreed.

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Brooklyn Delhi Founder Chitra Agrawal Finds Community Through Food

It all started with a blog. More than a decade ago, Chitra Agrawal began documenting her family’s recipes from India on “ABCD’s of Cooking,” which quickly achieved a loyal following. Agrawal began taking the recipes and making them her own, using local produce and foods she found in Brooklyn, and an idea started to develop. “I was slowly carving out a style of cooking that reflected both my Indian heritage and American identity,” she says.

The blog led Agrawal to connect with other passionate home chefs and participate in the spirited local food scene: She organized cooking classes, competed in cook-offs, and collaborated with local growers. All of this eventually led to the publication of “Vibrant India: Fresh Vegetarian Recipes from Bangalore to Brooklyn,” and the launch of Brooklyn Delhi, which sells a variety of plant-based simmer sauces, achaars and condiments.

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Bed Stuy’s The Narativ Reopens With Brooklyn Kettle Coffee Shop

The revamped space at 385 Tompkins Avenue in Bed Stuy opened January 15, 2021 as a cafe that also sells home decor objects and clothing. Previously, it was The Narativ, a concept shop showcasing African artisans in the U.S. Now known as The Narativ House, the full venture continues online with retail, wholesale, marketing and consulting.

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In Bushwick, a Black-Owned Photography Store Opens, Inspiring Love From the Community

When Dominick Lewis decided to open a photography store in Bushwick, he had no idea what kind of response he would receive.

“It’s been amazing,” Lewis said during a recent visit to the store, called Photodom., which opened on September 12. “We’ve had over 1,200 customers that came through and bought things. It’s been a great first month for such a small space like this.”

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Bed Stuy’s BLK MKT Vintage Celebrates Black Culture and History

“Curators of a collection of Black curiosities, heirlooms and collectibles,” as they put it, Kiyanna Stewart and Jannah Handy founded Bed Stuy’s BLK MKT Vintage in 2019 after years of selling online and at markets such as the Brooklyn Flea.

The quaint space in an historic building on a busy corner quickly attracted throngs of enthusiastic locals. They came in to check out antique family photographs displayed in their original frames in the windows, political pins obscure and common from the 1960s and 1970s on counters in the middle of the store, and popular books arrayed in the rear of the space that would have been familiar sights in Black households of decades past, all attractively displayed in an inspiring celebration of Black culture and history.

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Iconic Williamsburg Bookstore Spoonbill & Sugartown Faces Ruin Due to Virus Shutdown

A fixture on Bedford Avenue for more than 20 years, iconic Williamsburg bookstore Spoonbill & Sugartown is in danger of going out of business due to the coronavirus shutdown. They specialize in arts-related books but carry everything, including used books and zines.

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Designer Michele Varian Opens Home Goods Store on Atlantic Avenue in Boerum Hill

Home goods designer Michele Varian opened her eponymous store quietly in Brooklyn last month, after shuttering her popular Soho shop. The Atlantic Avenue store sells Varian’s own line of lighting, furniture, wallpaper and pillows, as well as artisanal products from about 100 other home designers and 70 jewelers.

“A lot of people come here very specifically for Michele Varian products,” Varian said. “But, also, we’re known as a place that has a lot of one-of-a-kind pieces a lot of emerging designers, and I really, really aspire to find pieces that you’re not going to find anywhere else.”

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Gage & Tollner Team Prep to Revive One of Brooklyn’s Oldest Restaurants

It was serendipitous. Ben Schneider, Sohui Kim, and St. John Frizell, the teams behind Red Hook restaurant The Good Fork and bar Fort Defiance respectively, were hoping to open a small cocktail bar in Downtown Brooklyn. A broker was showing them some spaces, none of which fit what they wanted. At the end of their tour, after a series of disappointments, the broker said, “Oh, let me show you one more thing.”

The team walked across Fulton Street and into the former home of Gage & Tollner. “When we walked in that day it had been cleared out and you could see the dining room for the first time in years,” said Frizell. “It was a magical experience.”

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AphroChic Creates Modern Heirlooms

In 2007, Jeanine Hays and Bryan Mason were far from the design world. The husband-and-wife team were living in San Francisco, she working with a nonprofit to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act in California and he getting his masters in African Diaspora Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. Design was just a hobby. When they started their blog AphroChic, its main goal, Hayes says, “was to address what we saw as a lack of representation in the online design conversation for designers and consumers of color.”

Soon enough, they noticed the same lack of representation in the design products they were discussing and began “filling that gap.” Their first line had culturally inspired pillows and textiles, and has since grown include poufs, kimonos, candles, artisan lighting and handmade rugs.

Miss Ada’s Tomer Blechman Rethinks Mediterranean Cuisine in Fort Greene

Food wasn’t the first option for Tomer Blechman. Before he came to America at the age of 28, the chef behind Fort Greene’s always packed Miss Ada studied alternative medicine in Israel, where he was born. His interest in shiatsu and acupuncture, he says, came from a place of wanting to heal.

“It was a natural transition,” he says of the move to working in kitchens. “If I couldn’t heal people through medicine I could heal people through what they put in their bodies. What we eat is what we are.”

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Williamsburg’s Dyphor Showcases an Eclectic Mix of Asian and African Furnishings

Stepping into the new home store Dyphor in Williamsburg is like stepping into a souk. The 3,000-square-foot store is packed with an eclectic mix of handmade, one-of-a-kind furnishings and accessories from Asia and Africa, along with a custom line of upholstery and bedding — all at a relatively affordable price point.

Hand-dyed silk pillows are stacked on top of tables, Moroccan lanterns hang above a teak and caned living room set. Vintage Moroccan and Turkish flat-weave carpets drape the walls.

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