Brighton Beach: Little Odessa by the Sea

Brighton Beach is home to New York's Ukrainian Jewish community, down in southern Brooklyn. You can pair it with a trip to Coney Island, since the same boardwalk along the Atlantic connects them.

Little Odessa is what locals call it, because the gray waters of the Atlantic remind them of the Black Sea coast they left behind.

The buildings and seemingly anonymous streets are full of stories. Brighton Beach is a neighborhood caught between two continents.

What to Do in Brighton Beach

This neighborhood is one more confirmation of that New York plasticity we love so much, with neighborhoods that mold themselves to the souls of the people who live there.

In Little Odessa you'll see signs in Cyrillic everywhere, babushkas, caviar in the shop windows, restaurants serving pierogi and borscht. It's easy to imagine you're somewhere in Slavic Europe.

In Brighton Beach it's common to walk into shops and restaurants where the person behind the counter has to call one of their kids over to translate. This wave of Russians and Ukrainians is recent, arriving between the seventies and the nineties, which is why their roots are still so palpable.

Before them, Jewish immigrants had already settled here after fleeing the atrocities of World War II (you can learn more about their stories at the Eldridge Street Museum, housed in the first great synagogue built in New York).

Brighton Beach is also a destination for hipsters who show up at its bars for an «authentic» vodka night. Pure intellectual irony, a very New York attitude.

Brighton Beach

Brighton Beach has a long white-sand beach with a classic boardwalk where you can walk and soak up the atmosphere, or just sit and enjoy the view and the sea breeze.

That same boardwalk connects with Coney Island, so walking the length of this long wooden promenade along the shore is a solid plan. You'll see two neighborhoods in one go.

Trying Russian Food in New York

On the inner streets of Brighton Beach there are several spots if you want to try classic Russian food, like pelmeni, borscht, and blini. For example:

1. Tatiana Restaurant and Nightclub – besides authentic Russian food, it puts on live dance performances and late-night shows.
2. Skovorodka (615 Brighton Beach Ave) – a big menu of Russian and Ukrainian dishes.

Remember to check whether these restaurants are still open before you go. Sadly, a lot of places have closed since the pandemic.

The Russian Mafia Neighborhood

Little Odessa is mysterious and hard to read. It's no tourist trap like Little Italy. Here everything is built to keep outsiders at arm's length, and the mafia isn't a quaint relic of the past the way the great Italian mobster families are.

It's an open secret that the Russian mafia pulls its strings from here. The unsettling film Lord of War (2005) gives you a little of Brighton Beach's cultural context. It's based on real events and stars Nicolas Cage as Yuri Orlov, a Ukrainian-born arms dealer.

But don't worry. Those mafia circles are well out of our orbit, and there's no danger in strolling the Brighton Beach boardwalk or wandering its side streets. The worst that can happen is that you don't understand a word.

Brighton Beach on Screen

Besides Lord of War, there's another Brighton Beach reference in Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream (2000). Ellen Burstyn's character, a mother hooked on amphetamines, lived in an apartment on 6th Street in Little Odessa.

Then there are James Gray's films set in Brighton Beach, Little Odessa (1994) with Tim Roth and the more recent Two Lovers (2008) with Joaquin Phoenix and Gwyneth Paltrow.

That's three stories to get you into this little bubble of another time and place, an hour from Downtown New York. Remember this word: «Spasiba.» In Brighton Beach it will open a lot of doors.

Neighborhood History

It was developed in 1868 as a beach resort, an attempt to evoke England's Brighton.

These days many Dominicans have moved into the area, and there's a sizable Pakistani community too. Still, the dominant culture here is Eastern Slavic.

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Address

Brighton Beach is in southern Brooklyn, facing the Atlantic Ocean and just east of Coney Island.

Getting There

Subway B, Q. Brighton Beach and Ocean Parkway stations

Map

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