How to book Lilia

Lilia is an Italian restaurant at 567 Union Avenue, on the corner of North 10th Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and the first solo restaurant of chef and owner Missy Robbins¹. Before it, Robbins led the kitchens at Spiaggia in Chicago and at both A Voce locations in New York, and in 2018 the James Beard Foundation named her Best Chef: New York City¹. She opened Lilia on January 19, 2016, with restaurateur Sean Feeney, and Pete Wells of The New York Times awarded it three stars⁴. Payson Stultz is the chef de cuisine².

The restaurant fills a refurbished warehouse that once housed an auto body shop⁴. The Infatuation describes the space as a bright white loft with high ceilings, brick walls, concrete floors and a long bar⁵. The restaurant describes its cooking as wood-fired seafood and handmade pasta in a casual setting¹.

The menu is à la carte. It runs from cocktail snacks such as cacio e pepe frittelle and leek focaccia, through starters, grilled shellfish and whole fish, to a list of pastas and a few grilled meats³. Pasta is the centre of attention for most critics, and the sheep's milk cheese agnolotti is the best-selling dish^4,6.

Getting in is hard. Lilia has 76 seats including the bar, and Feeney told Resy that about 5,000 people a night put their names on the waitlist⁴. Reservations go through Resy or by email¹, while bar seats are kept for walk-ins and people queue before the doors open^4,5.