Some say we will never be able to go home again. The weight of this statement will perhaps resonate most for immigrants who chose to leave, refugees who were forced to do so, and those whose communities have been ravaged by storms or wars. Brooklyn Restaurateurs Renato Poliafito And Demetri Makoulis are both first-generation Americans who inherited a sense of their family’s birthplace through their mother’s cooking and the languages ​​spoken around the table in their separate Brooklyn kitchens. And since the first week of October, they, along with Makoulis’ wife, Sarah Schneiderhave brought the past into their present with two restaurants dedicated to the simple act of coming home.

Pasta evening And Gus and Marty are two of Brooklyn’s newest restaurants; they opened respectively on October 1stst and 4th. In Prospect Heights, Pasta Night is an Italian-American restaurant, or as Poliafito calls it, “Italian with an American accent.” Gus & Marty’s, from the husband and wife team of Egg Shop, Makoulis and Schneider, is Greek: authentic, delicious Greek with a designer Williamsburg twist. And down to the bones of its creamy stucco interior, it’s a love letter to the islands from which Makoulis’ family emigrated.

When I spoke to the owners of Pasta Night and Gus & Marty’s, they knew almost nothing about each other, despite their similarities. Before launching their new projects, the two restaurateurs were breakfast experts. Makoulis and Schneider launched their egg-only dining concept, Egg Shop, in SoHo and Williamsburg in 2014 and 2017, while Poliafito opened his cafe, Ciao Gloria, in 2019. They both pivoted to dine-in concepts uniquely, driven by individual journeys that brought those closest to their origin stories. And after pushing back the launch dates from week to week, the restaurants finally saw the light of day, simultaneously, in two Brooklyn neighborhoods in early October.

For Makoulis and Schneider, creating Gus and Marty’s, which they named after their fathers, was about opening a new chapter in the Greek-American experience in New York. They wanted to pay homage to tradition, family and community with incredible food and a redefined atmosphere.

“Growing up, we would go to Astoria and we had our mainstays: the Greek restaurants I went to with my dad… you saw the same thing: white and blue, a little bit of kitsch,” Makoulis told Observer . . “I love food and grew up with it at home. I’ve always kind of associated Greek restaurants with this general motif. I never thought about thinking outside the box. It took someone like Sarah – my family loves her to death – to embrace Greek hospitality.

After meeting Makoulis on the Lower East Side in 2006, Schneider, who grew up in San Diego (she describes her father as “a Jewish boy from Brooklyn”), fully immersed herself in traditional Greek culture. The couple often visited Greece and, little by little, Sarah’s eyes were opened to the multiple beauty of these islands.

“I loved the food and wondered, ‘Why isn’t there a different representation of what Greek is in New York?’ It’s such a big place with so many different times, why isn’t that what I see? Schneider told Observer.

The idea of ​​opening a Greek restaurant was born during a trip to Crete in May 2022 and became a concrete plan by 2023. Makoulis and Schneider purchased a vacant and undecorated space at 232 N. 12th Street in Williamsburg, and with the right lighting, the right decoration and the right chefs Pete Lipson And Kenny Cuomo and input from Makoulis’ mother, the place began to resemble their version of a Greek house.

“The chef (Cuomo) has experience in fine dining. We told him we wanted the food to be amazing, but to feel like it was your Greek grandmother’s. My mom tasted the spinach pie and said, ‘That’s fantastic,’ and then she got a thousand notes,” Makoulis said with a laugh. “She came back with trays of her own pies and said, ‘Taste this and replicate it.’ This really changed the recipe. Then the chef said to me, “I got it!” » – that ineffable feeling of homemade!

With a flaky crust and a dense, lightly spiced filling, the spinach pie and fluffy toasted pita delivered that superiority that only grandmothers (and very good gourmet chefs claiming to being a grandmother) can be up to the task.

Meanwhile, at Pasta Night, Poliafito, his business partner and co-owner Joseph Catalanotti and chef Carly Voltéro go, in the words of Poliafito, “towards the mother sauce, not towards the shape of the pasta”. Rich explorations of Italian classics, under the reign of simplicity, guide the seasonally changing menu of house-made pastas and crispy chicken Milanese.

Pasta Night is located in the space directly across from Poliafito’s Ciao Gloria, dedicated to exceptional coffee, pastries and lunches. The cafe was the first business that helped the designer turned baker and restaurateur honor his Sicilian roots, but Poliafito didn’t always dream of doing it.

Poliafito’s parents immigrated to Brooklyn from Sicily in the 1950s. After the Pasta Night owner was born in 1979, he spent four to nine months at a time throughout his childhood with his parents in Italy. As a young New Yorker in the 1980s, Poliafito began to dread those long stays away from home and felt alienated from his heritage. But all that changed during a semester abroad in Florence to study art.

“It changed things for me, 100 percent. I really had the opportunity to witness it and experience it in a very different way. For me it was incredible. This started my fascination with Italy. From then on, I went there often as an adult. I focused on all the different regions; got to know the country himself, Poliafito told Observer. “That’s what brought me to Ciao Gloria.”

From its opening in October 2019 until the 2020 pandemic, Ciao Gloria hosted occasional pasta nights: pop-ups offering handmade pasta to diners in a supper club format. When the building across the street became vacant, Poliafito knew it was his opportunity to make pasta night permanent and subsequently purchased the space in May 2024.

“It’s a new celebration of my Italian heritage with these American touches,” Poliafito said. “Ciao Gloria is American with an Italian accent. Pasta Night is Italian with an American accent.

Everything from the menu to the decor pays homage to Poliafito’s roots. The changing menu currently offers Carbonara di Stagione (seasonal), lasagna, arancini (a Sicilian street food of fried rice balls filled with meat and cheese or peas), Genoese pesto with broccoli rabe which traditionally uses Apulian orecchiette, and Poliaftio’s personal favorite: The Big Ragu (a Laverne and Shirley reference), which mixes Malfade in a slowly braised stew and a succulent Parmigiano-Reggiano-based cream sauce.

Pasta Night’s interior is a reflection of Poliafito’s past, taking inspiration from 1980s Italy, when the restaurateur first discovered the country. The terracotta tiled bar is lit by retro geometric sconces. The dining room’s beautifully scraped wood floors, brick walls, and green leather banquettes could exist in any well-designed New York restaurant, but framed vintage artwork and a delightfully mirrored console table garish takes the guests back to Poliafito’s vision. The bathroom’s shiny bubblegum pink diamond tiles pop with a framed poster of a 1986 Italian erotic film titled The Racconti Sensuali by Cicciolina.

“Images of Italy in the 1980s are burned into my brain. I couldn’t explain to anyone other than my family what I had seen or experienced,” Poliafito said. “Now I can actually express it.”

The design complements the 1950s and 1960s Sicilian coastal feel of Ciao Gloria. And while both restaurants are ways Poliafito learned to express his own experience as a first-generation American, he’s grateful to have shared that with the generations that brought him here.

“My mother died last month. I try to focus on the positives. She was 90 years old, she had a good life, she loved her children. She died as peacefully as possible,” Poliafito said. “Everything happened simultaneously with the restaurant. I think my mother would have loved it. She heard about it. In my mind, (Pasta Night) is my dedication to her.

To decorate a large wall at Gus & Marty’s, Makoulis and Schneider looked through dozens of family photos, looking for the best images to display that would allow customers to travel back in time with them.

“My mother was a prolific documentarian about our lives and their lives. Sarah and I went through all the photo albums and pulled out what we were drawn to and loved. “I took them, scanned them and enlarged them to high resolution – I bought every one of these frames on eBay and Etsy – putting them in there, I have to tell you,” Makoulis said, taking a moment to choke and stop to think. , “the rest of my family is entirely in Greece. I was able to put myself in their shoes like never before.

When Makoulis’ father came to the restaurant after the gallery wall was raised, he stopped and looked at each photo, murmuring to himself about the faces that flashed across his memories and experiences.

“And this is Eleni,” he told his son, “And if she knew that 40, 50 years later, she would be here.”

When I asked who Eleni was, Makoulis told me she was responsible for quality control at the factory run by her father. He initially chose the photo for the aesthetic, but maybe one day, if Eleni is still alive and well in Brooklyn, she too will find herself returning home through the doors of Gus & Marty’s.

Although Poliafito and the Makoulis-Schneiders are strangers, they share a common thread and weave together what defines the New York immigrant experience, for this generation and those before it. They are inviting and unpretentious and strive to offer a new experience based on those that have defined theirs. They serve as beacons of light for neighbors and visitors from all walks of life. They call on the beautiful passengers of this populous metropolis to stop in the homeland of their mothers and fathers, to stay a while at wooden tables filled with pita and homemade pasta, to drink in the vineyards of the Mediterranean and to discover what it means to be together. .