Most searches for mediterranean food in Brooklyn end at a menu you have to read. Laser Wolf, on the roof of the Hoxton in Williamsburg, mostly does not have one. It is a shipudiya — an Israeli skewer house — and it runs a fixed format: one price, a table covered in small salads, hot laffa bread, a single skewer that you choose, and soft serve at the end. The only real decision you make all evening is which skewer. Everything else has already been decided for you, which is either a relief or a shock depending on what you walked in expecting.
A fixed-format dinner with a skyline behind it is a very specific kind of evening, and it books out. Ask Karpo when the roof has tables, whether the weather is going to cooperate, and what to do in Williamsburg with the hour before your slot.
The format is the restaurant
Sitting down triggers the salatim: a spread of small salads and dips that arrives more or less at once and covers the table. This is not an appetiser you ordered. It is the opening movement of the set menu, and it is where a lot of first-timers make their mistake, which is eating all of it. The salads are generous, they are replenished, and they are also not the point of the meal.
Then comes the laffa — a large, blistered, hot flatbread meant for tearing and dragging through the salatim. It arrives warm and it is best in the first few minutes, so this is the moment to actually stop talking and eat. Cold laffa is a sad object and no kitchen can save it for you.
The skewer is the course you chose, and it arrives after the table has already been grazing for a while. This is deliberate — the sequencing is designed so the grill lands when the salads have taken the edge off. Then soft serve, which is included, and which closes the meal whether or not you think you have room.
Pacing it properly
The single most useful piece of advice about this place is to go slowly at the start. The salatim is designed to be inexhaustible and it will happily fill you before the thing you came for arrives. Treat the opening spread as something to taste across rather than something to finish, and the meal lands the way it was built to.
Choosing a skewer is the one place your preferences matter, and the choices differ in character rather than quality — some are lean and charred, some are rich and fatty, and the vegetarian option is a real dish rather than an afterthought. If you are two people, choosing differently and sharing a bite is more informative than both ordering the famous one.
Because the format is fixed, the meal has a natural length, and it is shorter than a conventional three-course dinner. That is worth knowing when you plan the rest of the night — this is a solid first act with time left over, not an evening that swallows itself.
The roof, the view and the weather
The room looks across the East River at Manhattan, and the view does a lot of work. Sunset seatings are the ones people fight over for obvious reasons, and the light through the glass in the hour before dark is genuinely the best version of the room.
It is a roof in New York, which means the weather is a variable in a way it is not at a basement restaurant. The space is enclosed enough to run year-round, but the experience on a clear evening and the experience in horizontal February rain are not the same purchase, and it is fair to let the forecast move your booking.
Late is its own mode. On the later nights of the week the room keeps going well past when most Williamsburg dining rooms have turned the lights up, which makes it a viable post-something plan rather than only a dinner reservation. The energy at eleven is closer to a bar with excellent food than to a restaurant.
Booking it without stress
Reservations are the whole ballgame and they move quickly, particularly for the golden hour and for weekend evenings. Weeknight early slots are consistently the easiest to get and give you the identical menu, which is the trade most people should be making.
Weekend lunch is the underrated door. It is a shorter, brighter, cheaper version of the same idea, the view is arguably better in daylight, and it is dramatically less contested than dinner. If the plan is to see what the fuss is about, that is the efficient way to do it.
It sits inside a hotel, which means the building has a lobby bar and the surrounding blocks have plenty else going on. Arriving twenty minutes early is not a wasted twenty minutes here, and it is a better hedge than arriving exactly on time and finding the lift queue backed up.
Practical notes
It is a fixed-format menu: salatim, laffa, one skewer per person and soft serve are all included in a single price. Check the current price when you book.
Go easy on the opening salads. They are replenished and they will fill you before the skewer.
Sunset seatings and weekend evenings are the hardest slots. Weeknight early bookings get the same food for far less effort.
Weekend lunch is the short, bright, cheaper version of the same meal and is much easier to book.
It is on the roof of a hotel on Wythe Avenue in Williamsburg; allow a few minutes for the lift at peak times.
Hours run later at the end of the week than at the start. Confirm the night you want before travelling.
Tags: #mediterraneanfood #laserwolf #williamsburg #brooklyneats #israelifood #rooftopdining #shipudiya #nycrestaurants #skylineview #brooklynfood #skewers #nycdinner #hoxton #eastriver
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Ask Karpo first
Fixed menu, fixed format, one decision. The variables are the slot and the weather. Ask Karpo when the roof has space, whether tonight is a clear-sky night or a rain night, and what is worth doing on Wythe Avenue in the hour before your table is ready.
