You’ve felt it coming for a while. The two of you just don’t laugh together the way you used to. Even going to the movies is an unparalleled chore; you can never agree on whether to do apps and ‘tails at the Nitehawk or split forties at the AMC in Kips Bay. Sometimes you find long hairs twirled around your toothbrush and you just know she’s doing it on purpose. A simmering vitriol has worked its way into every conversation and now, even the most inane comment is sure to elicit a six hour shouting match about the astral significance of cardinal directions. So when your boyf/lady friend/sex partner says, ‘Hey babe, let me take you out for a nice dinner,’ you know that that sickly sweet voice doesn’t mean he or she is ready to reconcile. You brace yourself, and then you say, ‘Sure, honey. But I get to pick.’ If you’re gonna get dumped at a Bushwick restaurant, you want it to be somewhere fucking delicious.
#1 Bun-ker (46-63 Metropolitan Ave)
Bun-ker is tucked away in the middle of nowhere. By the time you get there, you feel like you might have left New York City, and you definitely aren’t in Bushwick anymore. In an area where Western Beef is the nearest outpost of civilization, you’ll find it delightfully easy to just shuffle into the night, with only the money in your pocket and the clothes on your back. Leave behind everything you hold true and dear and lumber aimlessly into the darkness. Love’s already been ripped callously from your soft, naïve hands, and what else is left for you in Bushwick? Plus, Bun-ker is BYOB and the pho is pho-nomenal so you can buffer yourself against the impending emotional doom!
Where to drown your sorrows after? If you insist on descending back into civilization, Pumps. Or The Bodega Wine Bar. They’re equidistant, and perhaps only the extent of your heartbreak can help you decide between the two.
#2 Blanca (261 Moore St)
Now, this one might be tough to pull off. You’ll have to have been dating someone extremely guilt-prone or extremely crime-ridden, but if his stacks are fat enough, get him to swing you over to Roberta’s Michelin starred tasting menu swank-plaza. Granted, it involves a three hour, trillion-course meal, but if you’re the type of person who likes to make uncomfortable situations extremely uncomfortable, then this might be the perfect place to end your relationship.
Where to drown your sorrows afterwards? Alaska Bar. 2–for–1 draft beers on Monday nights, and a Coors/shot deal all night.
#3 Mominette (221 Knickerbocker Ave)
If you’re hellbent on not letting this particular love-fish go, Mominette is the only place where you might actually be successful. Mominette, which oozes romantic date-night without betraying a pinprick of quaintness. Mominette, which boasts gentle cocktails that still manage to pack a throaty punch. Mominette, that French outpost amidst the blossoming chaos of Knickerbocker Ave. This is the only place where lost love just might be found again. And if the not, it’s only a short distance away from…
Where to drown your sorrows after? Tandem. Always a rollicking good time. Not only are you likely to get plastered at a relatively inexpensive rate, but you just might find a new love-fish to buy you a drink.
#4 Northeast Kingdom (18 Wyckoff Ave)
For when you’re trying to make a gentle dent in your ex-special somebody’s wallet, or you happen to have a thing for ‘farm-to-table,’ or when you want to eat dishes that sound important and tragic, like ‘beet soup,’ and ‘pressed Clawhammer farm pork.’ The tastiness won’t numb the pain of being rejected by someone who knows you so well, but you’ll start to have one of those out-of-body experiences where your tastebuds are weeping with pleasure and your eyeballs are weeping with hopelessness and fear, and the two sensations are (in a kind of pleasant way) tearing you apart. Is this what it means to be alive?
Where to drown your sorrows after? Heavy Woods. Always $5 for a PBR and a shot, and sometimes they have homemade bagel chips. Drunken ingestion of cheese and bread and well whiskey? The (im)perfect cure to any broken heart.
#5 Texas Fried Chicken (803 Cypress Ave)
Although technically this chicken shack is in Ridgewood, it’s just over the border, and honestly, it’s the best place nearby to have your heart ripped out of your body and stomped on by someone you once felt a intimate and primal connection with. Their chicken is pretty damn good, they have biscuits and mashed potatoes, and you can just cut right to the chase, filling the hole in your heart with greasy, crispy, chicken skin. After all, life is just a series of brief and empty successes, lubricated by a slow and torturous decline. Why not hasten the sweet release of death by coating your arteries in something delicious?
Where to drown your sorrows after? Just go to Seneca Ave Liquor and get a fifth of something cheap.