Some say you will never be able to return home. The weight of this statement may resonate more for immigrants who have chosen to leave, refugees who have been forced, and those whose communities have been devastated by storms or wars. Restaurateurs of Brooklyn Renato Poliafito and Demetri Makoulis they are both first-generation Americans who inherited a sense of their families’ birthplaces through their mother’s cooking and the languages ​​spoken around the table in their separate Brooklyn kitchens. And from the first week of October, they, together with Makoulis’s wife, Sarah Schneiderthey’ve poured the past into the present with two restaurants dedicated to the very act of going home again.

Easter night and Gus & Marty’s are two of Brooklyn’s newest dining spots; they opened, respectively, on October 1St and 4th. In Prospect Heights, Pasta Night is an Italian-American joint, or as Poliafito calls it, “Italian with an American accent.” Gus & Marty’s, from Egg Shop husband-and-wife team Makoulis and Schneider, is Greek—delicious, authentic Greek with a touch of designer Williamsburg. And down to the bones of its cream 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 nothing about the other despite their similarities. Before debuting their newest ventures, both restaurateurs were breakfast food experts. Makoulis and Schneider debuted their egg-only dining concept, Egg Shop, in SoHo and Williamsburg in 2014 and 2017, while Poliafito opened their cafe, Ciao Gloria, in 2019. Both have turned to concepts of dinner, moved by individual journeys that brought them closer to their origin stories. And after pushing the launch dates from one week to the next, the restaurants finally appeared simultaneously in two Brooklyn neighborhoods in early October.

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

“When I was growing up, we used to go to Astoria and we had our pillars — the Greek shops that I went to with my dad … you saw the same thing: white and blue, a little kitsch,” Makoulis told the Observer. . “I love food and I grew up with it at home. I have always associated Greek restaurants with this general reason. I never thought outside the box. It took someone like Sarah – my family loves her to death – to break into Greek hospitality.

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

“I loved the cuisine and I asked myself, ‘Why isn’t there a different representation of what Greek is in New York?’ It’s such a vast place with so many different moments, why can’t I see that?” Schneider told the Observer.

The idea of ​​opening a Greek restaurant was sparked during a trip to Crete in May 2022, and by 2023 it had become a concrete plan. Makoulis and Schneider bought a vacant, undecorated space at 232 N. 12thth Street in Williamsburg and with proper lighting, decor, chefs Pete Lipson and Kenny Cuomo and input from Makoulis’ mother, the place began to feel like their version of a Greek home.

“Chef (Cuomo) has a refined dining environment. I told her we want the food to be amazing, but it feels like your Greek grandmother’s. “My mom tasted the spinach pie and said, ‘That’s fantastic,’ and then she took a thousand notes,” Makoulis said with a laugh. “She came back with trays of her own pies and said, ‘Taste this and replicate it.’ He actually changed the recipe. Then Chef said, “Got it!” – that ineffable feeling of home!”

With a flaky crust and dense, lightly spiced filling, Spinach Pie and Pillow Grilled Pita delivered that superiority that only grandmas (and really good fine dining chefs) can claim. being grandparents) can deliver.

Meanwhile, at Pasta Night, Poliafito, his business partner and co-owner Joseph Catalanotti and chef Carly Voltero they go, in the words of Poliafito, “mother sauce first, not pasta first”. Rich explorations of Italian classics, with reigns held tightly to simplicity, guide the rotating seasonal menu of homemade pasta and crispy chicken milanese.

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

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

“It changed things for me, 100 percent. I really got to witness and experience in a very different way. For me, it was amazing. My fascination with Italy began. From then on, I often went to adulthood. I focused on all the different regions; learned about the country itself, Poliafito told the Observer. “That brought me to Ciao Gloria.”

From its opening in October 2019 until the 2020 pandemic, Ciao Gloria hosted occasional pasta nights: pop-ups that offered 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 the pasta night permanent, and subsequently purchased the space in May 2024.

“It’s a new celebration of my Italian heritage with those American accents,” 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 a Carbonara di Stagione (seasonal), lasagna, arancini (a Sicilian street food of fried rice balls with meat and cheese or pea fillings), a Genoese pesto with broccoli, which traditionally uses orecchiette from Puglia and Poliaftio’s personal favorite: The Big Ragu (a Laverne and Shirley reference), which tosses Malfade in a slow-cooked ragu and a delicious Parmigiano-Reggiano-based cream sauce.

Pasta Night’s interior is a reflection of Poliafito’s past, drawing inspiration from 1980s Italy, when the restaurateur first experienced the country. The terracotta bar is lit by retro geometric sconces. The lovingly scratched wood floors, brick walls and green leather booths in the dining area could exist in any well-designed New York restaurant, but the framed vintage artwork and a delightfully bright mirrored console table, bring guests right back to Poliafito’s vision. The shiny, bubblegum pink diamond tiles in the bathroom appear with a framed poster of a 1986 Italian erotic film called I Racconti Sensuali di Cicciolina.

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

The design complements Ciao Gloria’s 1950s-60s Sicilian coastal vibe. And while both restaurants are ways Poliafito learned to express his own experience as a first-generation American, he’s grateful to share it with the generations that brought him here.

“My mother died last month. I try to focus on the positives. She was 90 years old, had a great life, loved her children. It went as smoothly as possible,” said Poliafito. “Everything happened simultaneously with the restaurant. I think mom would have liked it. He heard all about it. In my mind, (Easter Night) is my dedication to her.”

To decorate a large wall at Gus & Marty’s, Makoulis and Schneider went 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 of our lives and their lives. Sarah and I went through all the photo albums and pulled what we were drawn to and loved. Taking them, scanning them and blowing them up in high resolution — I bought every single one of these frames off of eBay and Etsy — putting them out there, I have to tell you,” Makoulis said, taking a moment as he choked and paused to reflect, “the rest of my family is all in Greece. I was able to walk in their shoes in a way I hadn’t before.”

When Makoulis’ father came to the restaurant after the gallery wall went up, he stopped and looked at each photo, whispering to himself about the faces that flashed through his memories and experiences.

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

When I asked who Eleni was, Makoulis told me that she was the quality control person at the factory his father ran. He initially chose the photo for aesthetics, but maybe one day, if Eleni is still alive and well in Brooklyn, she too will find herself coming home again to Gus & Marty’s doors.

Although Poliafito and Makoulis-Schneiders are strangers, they share a thread and weave together what defines the immigrant experience in New York, for this generation and those that came before it. They are welcoming and modest – they strive to provide a new experience based on those that have defined their own. They serve as beacons of light for neighbors and visitors from all walks of life. They invite the wonderful passengers of this busy metropolis to stop in the homelands of their mothers and fathers – to sit for a while at wooden tables piled with pita and homemade pasta, drink from the vineyards of the Mediterranean and discover what it means to be together . .