Win Son – Taiwanese abundance behind a bodega awning in Brooklyn

Win Son opened on Graham Avenue in East Williamsburg in 2016, the work of two friends, Josh Ku and chef Trigg Brown, whose partnership grew out of trips to Flushing chasing the Taiwanese food neither could find closer to home. They named the restaurant after Ku's grandfather's former textile company in Taiwan — Win Son translates roughly as abundance. Set behind a sun-bleached, bodega-style awning that regulars admit is easy to walk straight past, the dining room became one of the most talked-about tables in the city within a year of opening, earning a Bon Appétit nod as one of Brooklyn's hottest restaurants and a place in Eater's 2017 Young Guns class. It holds a Bib Gourmand in the MICHELIN Guide, a distinction for cooking that is generous, inventive and sharply priced rather than for white-tablecloth formality — recognition, in short, for a corner restaurant that still runs on the same DIY energy it opened with.

01The room and the setting

The building itself has layers of East Williamsburg history built into it. The corner space once housed El Brilliant Restaurant, a Latin diner, and a defunct hair salon next door; Ku and Brown knocked down the dividing wall between the two to create the footprint of today's dining room. From outside, the restaurant still reads as an old-fashioned storefront — the sun-bleached facade and painted awning fit so neatly into the block that the restaurant's name, spelled out across the front, is sometimes the only giveaway.

Inside, the mood shifts. White subway tile, a bar finished in greenish granite, and raw-wood shelving for the liquor bottles were largely built by the owners and their friends, giving the room a scrappy, handmade texture rather than a designed one. The banquettes were laid out in a yin-and-yang arrangement that Brown borrowed from the Manhattan restaurant Faro, and the hardwood floor underfoot is original to the building, patched with vinyl tile where it was beyond saving. A terrace and air conditioning round out a room built for long, noisy dinners rather than quiet ones.

02The chef

Trigg Brown, a Virginian who grew up in Goochland, discovered Taiwanese cooking as a university student working in the kitchen at Keswick Hall, where chef Pei Jen Chang became his first mentor in the cuisine. He went on to cook in New York under Tom Colicchio at Craft and under Stephen Starr at Upland before joining forces with Josh Ku, a Queens-born son of parents from southern Taiwan who had worked in construction and real estate and had never run a restaurant before Win Son.

Insider tip

Dinner only; walk-ins welcome but complete parties only; large parties book a family-style long table.

The two built their menu on research trips to Flushing's Taiwanese strongholds and to Taiwan itself, translating dishes they loved into a Brooklyn idiom. By 2019 their work had been jointly shortlisted for the James Beard Award for Best Chef, New York City, and Brown was named among Food & Wine's Best New Chefs that same year. In 2023 the pair published a cookbook with writer Cathy Erway, documenting a hundred of the restaurant's recipes.

03The cooking

The dish that effectively started the restaurant is fly's head, or tsang ying tou — a chive and pork stir-fry studded with fermented black beans so small they resemble the insect that gives it its name; Ku has called it the dish responsible for the whole partnership. Stinky tofu on the menu is sourced from a friend's Taiwanese grandmother, a detail the founders are happy to volunteer rather than hide.

Elsewhere the kitchen works in minced-pork lu rou fan over rice, danzi noodles tangled with minced heritage pork and scallions, and sesame noodles built on roasted oyster mushrooms, snow pea leaves and peanuts — Taiwanese street-food staples reframed with New York sourcing rather than reinvented from scratch.

04What to order

The Big Chicken Bun — a pollo bao finished with doufu ru mayo and herbs — and the Beef Roll, a dense scallion pancake wrapped around tender beef, are the two dishes regulars order on repeat. Pan Griddled Pork Buns arrive with herbs and a chili vinaigrette, while the Scallion Pancake is served simply with sweet soy and chili. For the table, the Sesame Noodles remain the vegetarian standby that first put the kitchen on the map.

05When to go and booking

Win Son serves dinner Tuesday to Saturday from 5:30pm to 11pm, and Monday and Sunday from 5:30pm to 10pm, according to the restaurant's own site in October 2026. Standard tables for up to nine can be booked through OpenTable, and walk-ins are welcome, though the restaurant seats only complete parties. Groups of ten to twenty can reserve a long table in the dining room for a four-course, family-style dinner with a beverage package covering beer and wine, or beer, wine and cocktails.

Across the street at 164 Graham Avenue, the same team runs Win Son Bakery, which opened on 3 September 2019 and operates all day as a bakery, coffee counter and diner — useful to know if the dinner wait runs long.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.