Baby Blues Luncheonette
Posted by estiator at 15 January, at 12 : 47 PM Print
RESTAURANT SPOTLIGHT
Brooklyn, NY @babybluesny on Instagram.
By MICHAEL KAMINER
Costa Damaskos and Jake Marsiglia watched in despair as Covid killed off a string of beloved New York restaurants. But instead of sit- ting on the sidelines, the pals took matters into their own hands. Damaskos, who owns a design company, and Marsiglia, a food-service veteran, decided to open their own eatery—and make it the kind of welcoming spot they always wished for in their own neighborhoods.
The result is Brooklyn’s Baby Blues Luncheonette, which Damaskos calls “a modern take on the Greek diner.” Its airy, compact space is painted blue and white, with eye-catching posters that span rock, jazz, and even views of Greece.
The real twist comes on the menu. Unlike Greek diners of yore, with their sprawling menus of American RESTAURANT SPOTLIGHT food, much of the fare at Baby Blues Luncheonette actually skews Greek.
The dishes draw on Damaskos’ heritage and Marsiglia’s kitchen experience. “I’ve been making tzatziki since I was seven years old,” says Damaskos, laughing. “It’s second nature. We had so many ideas, we had to pare back.”
Among the offerings: H.L.T. (halloumi, lettuce, and heirloom tomatoes), Greek salad, watermelon-feta salads, the “Zorba plate” (halloumi, tzatziki, Greek potatoes), Greek yogurt bowls, and baklava banana bread. Nearly all of it’s made in-house; except for imported feta and halloumi, most provisions are locally sourced.
“My dad’s side of the family is from Greece, and my mother’s side from Cyprus,” says the Australian-born Damaskos, who emigrated to New York five years ago. “Being Greek was very much a part of my upbringing. I learned to cook from my dad and my yiayia, who was an amazing cook. She would measure everything by hand, and she was so swift with everything. I remember being really small, and just peeking over to see what she was doing.”
Damaskos also found it curious “that Greek diners were never that Greek-heavy. I wanted to put that emphasis back in, and put the culture up front. There’s a bit of Australian influence in some of the breakfast-forward items, but it’s more about finding another way to be modern with some Greek classics.” That also translates as “healthier options with higher- quality produce, something you may not get traditionally from the diner experience,” he says.
Damaskos is not a complete restaurant novice. “When I moved to New York and was trying to get a job in design, I ended up working in a kitchen—ironically, it was Two Hands, an Australian restaurant. And I loved it,” Damaskos said. While he and Marsiglia had always talked about opening a restaurant, Covid provided the spark.
“So many New York places disappeared. We wanted to open a New York spot, and a Greek diner seemed perfect,” Damaskos says. “When I first moved here, I learned Greeks had traditionally opened the diners, and it felt like the right thing to try and continue.” Watching Seinfeld – and seeing Tom’s Restaurant, which played the show’s Monk’s Café—also had an impact, he says. “I was obsessed with that show as a seven-year-old. I wanted to create a spot that felt like somewhere you’ve been, but focus on the quality of the food and the aesthetic.”
Their first, “ideal” space got away from them – the Classic Coffee Shop on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, whose owner was retiring. “The owner would play classic rock. He had a few bagels, and egg sandwich, and black coffee. We saw that spot and realized we wanted to help preserve this way of eating, with classic, good-quality food,” Damaskos says. But another party snagged the lease, and the duo kept searching.
The pair happened on their East Williamsburg space, the onetime home of a gallery/café, and Baby Blues Luncheonette took off. Damaskos applied his design chops to the space, with a retro-sleek menu, classic salt-and- pepper shakers on tables, and a clean aesthetic somewhere between New York diner and midcentury modern. “We want it to look like the local neighborhood luncheonette,” Damaskos says. “We also wanted to offer hospitality at a time when it’s impossible to get a table anywhere to sit down for food. We don’t take reservations. We want people to feel excited, try our food, and just enjoy themselves.”
As others have reported, there are fewer New York City luncheonettes than ever: a “mass-extinction” event that has been “unfolding slowly around us for decades, in plain sight,” wrote then-New York magazine food critic Adam Platt in 2017. And while that continues to be true a few years onward, there is a new wave of operators, like Agi’s Counter, Thai Diner, Golden Diner, Soho Diner, and S&P.
Damaskos continues to run Virtually Real, a two-year-old internet design company with clients in music, food, and hospitality. He designed the restaurant’s merchandise—a growing line of revenue—including T-shirts and mugs. He and Marsiglia are also set to launch an exclusive line of Baby Blues Luncheonette coffee, produced exclusively for them by a Brooklyn roaster.
For the first-time restaurateurs, running their own food business has been “mentally challenging,” Damaskos says. “It’s financially challenging. Luckily, we never had problems with hiring. Our friends work with us, and that’s what makes it special. Customers pick up on that energy. We’re a group of people who like hanging out, who happen to be working in a restaurant.”
A major learning has been the importance of communication, Damaskos says. “You need to be really good at communicating when you’re in the kitchen. You need to be good at communicating when you’re building out a restaurant. We’re pretty lucky. We got through it pretty unscathed.”
Next for the business partners: “Well, Jake is Italian,” says Damaskos. “So we like to joke that the next spot will be Italian.” In the meantime, he says, “I feel lucky that I’m able to contribute to New York, which has given me a lot. I’m proud to be Greek, and it’s amazing I get to do that and cook, which is how I started in New York. It feels like it’s come full circle.”
