Domino Park Lost Its Ice Cream and Pizza This Fall. Williamsburg's New Openings Lean Toward Martini Hour.

Two Williamsburg daytime fixtures closed on Sunday, September 27. Oddfellow Ice Cream Co. shut its Domino Park scoop shop after five years, and Partners Coffee served its last cup at the North Sixth Street flagship where the company began. By late October, Roberta's had also left its spot at the edge of the park.

In the same weeks, the openings around the South Side came in as a cocktail bar, a vinyl-DJ bar, a steakhouse with a martini happy hour, and a burger shop serving a full cocktail list for the first time. The waterfront lost places you stop at in the afternoon. The new places are built for the evening.

What closed: the places you'd stop at in daylight

Ice cream, coffee, and pizza made up the daytime side of the waterfront. Here is what closed, according to Eater NY's September and October closings roundups and reporting from Greenpointers:

• Oddfellow Ice Cream Co., 40 River Street between Grand and South First. Closed September 27 after five years, with two farewell ice cream socials on September 25 and 26.
• Partners Coffee flagship, 125 North Sixth Street at Berry. Closed September 27 after a 15-year run that started under the name Toby's Estate Brooklyn.
• Sweet Chick, 164 Bedford Avenue at North Eighth. Greenpointers reported in September that the chicken-and-waffles flagship had quietly closed after 13 years.
• Roberta's at Domino Park, 6 Grand Street at River Street. Eater reported that the location has been removed from Roberta's website and that online ordering for it has stopped.

Partners explained the closure in an Instagram post quoted by Eater NY. The lease was up, and despite a push to keep the flagship open:

"we have had to face the heartbreaking reality that it is no longer possible to stay."

Domino Park's own Domino Square directory still lists OddFellows and Roberta's among its food tenants, so trust the closure reports over the directory for now.

What opened: drink-forward rooms on the South Side

Here are the fall openings closest to the park, listed roughly north to south:

1. Susu's, 229 Kent Avenue near North First. Opened September 23 as a neighborhood bar with vinyl DJs on weekends. It comes from Michael Bishop-Myers, an alum of the now-closed Greenpoint bar the Pencil Factory, and his brother Steven Bishop. The menu includes a Negroni called the Pencil Pusher in honor of the old bar.
2. Gotham Burger Social Club, 216 Grand Street at Driggs. Opened September 23 as its first permanent Brooklyn location, after a two-year residency at Threes Brewing in Greenpoint. This is the first Gotham location with a full cocktail program, with drinks around $15, and the beer list includes Threes, Talea, and Grimm.
3. Booth's Extra Fine, 62 South Second Street near Wythe. Opened October 6 in the former Mighty Quinn's BBQ space, from the team behind Nobody Told Me. Martini Hour runs nightly from 4 to 6 p.m., with $12 martinis, $5 mini hot dogs, $2 oysters, and half-priced caviar.
4. Mythily, 129 Havemeyer Street between Grand and South Fourth. Opened September 30. Top Chef alum Rasika Venkatesa cooks what the restaurant calls "progressive South Indian" food, rooted in Tamil Nadu and named for her grandmother. Dishes include benne dosa with Jimmy Nardello pepper chutney and a saffron-cardamom tres leches.
5. My Friend Duke, 90 South Fourth Street at Berry. Opened September 12 as a corner cocktail bar under a hunter-green awning, from the team behind Mug's Ale House, in the former home of Nicky's Unisex.
6. Naked Tomato, 476 Kent Avenue near South 11th. Opened October 14 on the river from chef Eyal Shani, who also runs Shmoné in Greenwich Village. It serves a meze menu and has a chef's tasting table at the open kitchen, the first Shani has done.

Four of those six are built around the bar. Two of them say so outright: in a press release quoted by Eater NY, Bishop-Myers said he "just wanted to build the bar my friends and I actually want to drink in," and Booth's put a martini in its daily schedule. None of them takes over the role of a scoop shop or an espresso counter on the walk to the river.

The daytime openings landed farther east and north

Williamsburg did get new daytime spots this fall, just not near the water. They opened along Lorimer and out on Grand:

• Tbili, 442 Lorimer Street near Maujer. A Georgian café that opened October 4 with coffee and pastries, plus khachapuri, ajapsandali, and sandwiches on shoti bread.
• Ferguson's Country, 732 Lorimer Street at Bayard. Opened September 12 from the team behind Baba and Baba Cool, with Southern cooking inspired by co-owner Scott Ferguson's native Alabama. Expect biscuit baskets, country-fried steak, catfish, and banana pudding in a 26-seat room with a tin-roofed patio and a jukebox.
• Food Street, 617 Grand Street at Leonard. Opened September 10 in the former Mad for Chicken space, serving halal burgers, chicken, paratha rolls, and gol gappay.

If your day used to start with a coffee near the river, the closest new option is now a Georgian café about a mile inland, unless you head to Partners' other location.

The waterfront's winter schedule

The park keeps its hours: Domino Park is open daily from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. What brings people there changes over the next few weeks.

The Greenmarket's last Sundays. The Domino Park Greenmarket, run by GrowNYC, sets up on River Street between South Third and South Fourth every Sunday from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., with fruit, vegetables, mushrooms, cut flowers, and plants. Its final Sunday this season is November 22.

The rink opens November 9. Skate at Domino Park runs from November 9 through February 21. The main entrance is on South Third Street between Kent Avenue and River Street. From November 9 through December 22, hours are 2:30 to 9 p.m. on weekdays and 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. on weekends. On Thanksgiving, November 26, and the day after, the rink opens at 10:30 a.m. and runs until 10 p.m. The park is partnering with Fireworks Skating Academy on a Learn to Skate program, and season passes and birthday parties for 2026–2027 are booked by email through the rink.

Food at the square. Domino Square's page lists Stretch Pizza, the pizza concept from Wylie Dufresne and Breads Bakery, and Frita Batidos, the Cuban-inspired spot from Ann Arbor, as open beside the rink. Even with Roberta's gone, there is still pizza at the waterfront.

The rink's weekday hours and Booth's Martini Hour overlap on the map and the clock. Skating starts at 2:30 p.m. on South Third, and a block and a half away, $12 martinis are poured on South Second from 4 to 6. That pairing is where this fall's turnover leaves the neighborhood.

Where your old daytime stops went

Some of the closed businesses still operate elsewhere, which makes it easier to rebuild a routine:

• Partners Coffee still runs a Williamsburg café at 145 Bedford Avenue, open daily from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., according to Greenpointers.
• Oddfellow still has shops in DUMBO, in Chelsea, and at Pier 5 in Brooklyn Bridge Park.
• Roberta's original Bushwick restaurant, open since 2008, is still operating.
• Sweet Chick still lists its Lower East Side, Prospect Heights, and Union Square locations as open.

Whatever moves into 40 River Street, 6 Grand Street, 125 North Sixth Street, and 164 Bedford Avenue will decide whether the waterfront gets a daytime counter back or adds another evening room to South Second, South Fourth, and Kent.

At Matthew Melinger, we follow block-by-block changes like these because they shape what a Williamsburg address is like to live with day to day. If you are thinking about owning near Domino Park or across the waterfront, schedule a private consultation and we will walk you through what this fall's openings and closings mean for the blocks you are considering.