Laser Wolf – Tel Aviv's fire on a Brooklyn rooftop

Eleven storeys above Wythe Avenue, on the open-air roof of The Hoxton, Williamsburg, Laser Wolf has turned an Israeli skewer house into one of Brooklyn's hardest tables to book. Chef Michael Solomonov and his business partner Steve Cook, the Philadelphia pair behind Zahav, brought their shipudiya concept north, opening the rooftop restaurant on 1 May 2022, their first in Brooklyn, in partnership with Chicago's Boka Restaurant Group. Everything here runs off one charcoal grill: dinner opens with an unlimited spread of salatim, hummus and warm pita, continues with a single dish chosen from the fire, and finishes with brown sugar soft serve, all beneath a wide, uninterrupted view of the Manhattan skyline across the East River. Within weeks of opening, Laser Wolf had become one of the city's toughest reservations, and it has stayed that way. It is Selected in the MICHELIN Guide.

01The room and the setting

Laser Wolf occupies the whole rooftop of The Hoxton, Williamsburg, a hotel development on Wythe Avenue that opened in 2019. The restaurant seats 225 around an open kitchen, where the charcoal grill sits in full view of the room and keeps the air warm even on a cool night. The atmosphere runs lively rather than hushed, with lights strung overhead, music pitched loud, and a bustling open kitchen setting the pace. Every seat, inside or out, looks toward the same reward: a straight sightline across the East River to the Manhattan skyline, a view diners consistently single out as the evening's best feature, especially at sunset. One account of a summer service described a 95-degree evening on the roof, the open kitchen running hot enough to make the already steamy air over Wythe Avenue feel hotter still.

02The chef and the team

Laser Wolf is Michael Solomonov's idea of the Israeli grill houses he grew up visiting, scaled up and transplanted to America. With Steve Cook, his business partner, he runs the Philadelphia group CookNSolo, whose flagship restaurant Zahav won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurant in 2019. Laser Wolf itself opened first in Philadelphia, in a remodelled warehouse, in February 2020, under chef Andrew Henshaw. Henshaw remains Executive Chef of the whole Laser Wolf project, flaming the coals nightly at the Philadelphia location, while the Brooklyn kitchen is run day to day by Mike Mayo as Chef de Cuisine, a Dewey Beach, Delaware native who came up through David Burke Kitchen in Manhattan before working kitchens in Denver. The Brooklyn restaurant also marks the first formal collaboration between CookNSolo and Boka Restaurant Group, the Chicago company founded by Kevin Boehm and Rob Katz in 2002.

Insider tip

Book well ahead on Resy; the terrace is covered and runs through winter.

03The cooking

The format is built around a shipudiya, the Israeli kebab shop style that inspired Solomonov to open Zahav a decade earlier using only a small charcoal grill; at Laser Wolf, with more room and more budget, the grill does almost everything. Dinner starts with salatim: hummus, pita and a rotating run of salads and dips, served as a shared course before anyone orders from the fire. From there, the choice runs to meat, fish or vegetables, all cooked directly over coals. Early menus have run to date-harissa chicken wings with tahini ranch, shawarma-spiced cauliflower, tuna tartare with pickled ginger and scallion schug, and a whole branzino finished with ginger and tomato. The Infatuation singled out the whole trout as "perfectly cooked and well-spiced, with some smokiness from the char," and called the restaurant's half eggplant "gorgeous." Dinner closes with brown sugar soft serve, topped at various times with pistachios, cherries and rice crispies, or with crunchy pumpkin seeds.

04What to order

The restaurant's own menu keeps the order simple: a signature hummus and pita, a colourful spread of vegetable salatim, then a single meat or vegetable skewer straight off the charcoal grill, and brown sugar soft-serve ice cream to finish. That is the sequence to follow at the table — salatim and hummus first, a skewer each from the fire next, then the soft serve, the one dessert on offer.

05When to go and booking

Reservations run through Resy and move fast: within weeks of opening, Laser Wolf was already one of the city's toughest tables to book, a reputation general manager Brian Jackson has had to manage ever since. For anyone shut out, the bar seats by the open kitchen are the realistic fallback, and the rooftop stays usable through the colder months since the terrace is covered and weatherproofed for winter.

06The neighbourhood

Wythe Avenue sits inside Williamsburg's densest stretch of restaurants, a short walk from the East River waterfront. One floor down, inside the same hotel, is K'Far, the group's all-day café, where the kitchen turns out Jerusalem bagels, borekas and hummus with schug in a far more casual room — a good second option on a night Laser Wolf is full.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.