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Brooklyn

Bensonhurst

Sicilian cannoli on 18th Avenue, Cantonese noodles under the D train, and Korean-Uzbek salads off Avenue O.

Bensonhurst is named for Egbert Benson, whose family farmed here before the developer James Lynch bought the land in the 1880s and started selling lots. Southern Italian families made it theirs in the middle of the twentieth century, and for decades this was Brooklyn's Little Italy: 18th Avenue, also signed Cristoforo Colombo Boulevard, lined with pork stores, pastry shops and social clubs, and every late summer the Festa di Santa Rosalia filling the avenue with food stands and processions.

The Italian bakeries are still here. But since about 1989 the neighborhood has been remade again, by immigrants from mainland China and Hong Kong and from the former Soviet Union — Russians and Ukrainians, and families from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Georgia. Today Bensonhurst holds Brooklyn's second Chinatown, mostly Cantonese-speaking, centered on 86th Street in the steel shade of the elevated D train.

Walk 86th Street at lunchtime and you pass Cantonese bakeries, noodle shops and fruit stands spilling onto the sidewalk while the train rattles overhead. Lenny's Pizza, where the opening scene of Saturday Night Fever was shot, closed in 2023 after some seventy years. What remains is a neighborhood that eats across three continents within a few blocks.

Sicilian pastry and marzipan on 18th Avenue

Cantonese bakeries and noodle shops under the D on 86th Street

The Festa di Santa Rosalia every late summer

Korean-Uzbek and Central Asian kitchens on the side avenues

Local notes

The Feast of Santa Rosalia

Each late summer, 18th Avenue closes for the Festa di Santa Rosalia, Palermo's patron saint. In recent years the feast has held a cannoli-eating contest outside Villabate Alba, the Sicilian bakery at 70th Street, which supplies the pastries.

86th Street under the el

The D train runs above 86th Street on the West End Line, and the blocks between 18th Avenue and Bay Parkway are the center of Bensonhurst's Chinatown — produce stands, Cantonese bakeries, roast-meat shops and noodle houses. Go hungry and go at midday, when everything is open.

L&B Spumoni Gardens, next door

The Sicilian-square pizzeria at 2725 86th Street, open since 1939, sits a few blocks past the usual Bensonhurst line, in Gravesend, but locals have always counted it as part of the neighborhood's table. Combine it with a walk along 86th Street.

Through the lens

Under the elevated tracks on 86th Street, midday sun falls through the ties in hard stripes — dramatic but contrasty; expose for the highlights. 18th Avenue's pastry windows are best at dusk when the cases glow. During the feast, arrive at golden hour for the lights coming on over the avenue.

Editorial draft — core details last reviewed October 13, 2026. Confirm practical details with the official site before you go.

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