Wenwen – A Taiwanese Dinner Party on Manhattan Avenue

Wenwen occupies the room that once held the neighbourhood bar The Royal, toward the quiet end of Manhattan Avenue in north Greenpoint, Brooklyn. It is the second restaurant from chef Eric Sze and his partner Andy Chuang, who opened their first Taiwanese restaurant, 886, on St Marks Place in the East Village in 2018 before bringing a larger, calmer version of that spirit to Brooklyn. The name is personal: it borrows the character shared by Sze's mother, Wenchi, and his wife, Wenhui, a word that also means language and carries a sense of elegance. Inside, the room holds sixty seats, including a small dining room alcove at the back, and a kitchen large enough, Sze has said, to let him cook the dishes of his Taipei childhood rather than just the late-night stir-fries of 886. Wenwen is Selected in the MICHELIN Guide, recognition for home-style Taiwanese cooking carried off with real technique — and it has outlasted 886 itself, which served its last round on 31 August 2026, though the owners have confirmed their Greenpoint restaurant remains open.

01The room and the setting

The façade is unmissable on Manhattan Avenue, its tall, narrow wood-framed windows giving passers-by a full view of a clean, airy dining room that trades the neon of 886 for something calmer. When Wenwen opened, Resy noted that there was something of a dress code at play, albeit one Sze described wanting to keep loose enough that diners could show up comfortable. The room is split between the main floor and that smaller rear alcove, a layout that lets the restaurant run a loud Friday dinner service and a quieter weekend brunch under the same roof.

02The chef

Eric Sze was born in Taipei in 1993 and moved to the United States in 2011 to study hospitality at New York University; before opening restaurants of his own, his only kitchen experience was a brief internship at Momofuku. He ran the East Village noodle shop The Tang, then opened 886 with Andy Chuang in 2018, a Taiwanese restaurant named for the country's +886 international dialling code. By the time Wenwen opened four years later, Sze had the space to cook more personal food: the pork belly and cuttlefish platter on the menu is, he has said, based on his mother's recipe, the dish he most wants to eat whenever he goes home.

Insider tip

Open daily with weekend brunch; nearest subway is Greenpoint Avenue (G).

03The cooking

Sze has described the Wenwen menu as a mix of dishes he grew up eating at home and others he has simply enjoyed in restaurants since, and it leans toward homestyle cooking rather than the stir-fries that built 886's reputation. Several dishes carry what the menu calls Taiwan Dust, a dusting of white pepper, sugar, MSG and salt over fried things like the popcorn chicken, and many others are finished with lard, which the kitchen will swap out on request. The pitch, in the restaurant's own words, is a Taiwanese dinner party — unpretentious on the plate but meticulously executed in the kitchen.

04Wine and drinks

Cocktails are the work of beverage director Morgan Robison, who started as a server at 886 when it opened in 2018 before working behind the bar at the cocktail bar Mace; his list for Wenwen runs to a Taiwanese Old Fashioned and a Jungle Negroni built on pineapple rum and banana liqueur.

05When to go and booking

Wenwen serves lunch and dinner Monday to Friday, 11.30am to 3pm and 5pm to 10pm, and brunch and dinner at the weekend, noon to 3pm and 5pm to 10pm; reservations run through OpenTable via the restaurant's own site. Groups of five or more are charged an automatic 20 per cent gratuity, and anyone bringing a cake pays a five-dollar-a-head cake fee. The nearest subway is Greenpoint Avenue on the G train, a short walk down Manhattan Avenue through a stretch of the neighbourhood still known for its Polish delis alongside its newer restaurant row.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.