5 Things to Know About Gus & Marty’s, Opening Soon in Brooklyn

1. This restaurant was years in the making.

But for Schneider and Makoulis, a first-generation Greek American, this was never something they planned for. The seed for a project like Gus & Marty’s came from the countless conversations they had about the state of Greek dining in New York City.

“You either had a very casual tavern or you had a white-tablecloth restaurant,” Schneider says, adding that they often imagined what the in-between might look like. “We talked about this for years. So, we eventually decided to come up with something very different but still very Greek.”

The primary source of inspiration? Makoulis’ family, who hail from the city of Naousa in northern Greece. As a child, Makoulis traveled back to Greece every summer. And when Schneider and Makoulis became a couple, she started taking regular trips there, too, learning more and more about not just his family but Greek culture as well.

“All the stereotypes about Greek families are true — especially when it comes to food,” Schneider says. “You eat all the food. And you drink all the drinks. There’s warmth and hospitality and love.”

And this is essentially the foundation for what Gus & Marty’s would eventually become.

2. But the restaurant may not be quite the Greek escape you’re envisioning.

Design-wise, Schneider and Makoulis knew that they didn’t want to rely on the overused blue-and-white visual tropes that have long-defined Greek restaurants in the U.S. 

“We deliberately stayed away from island references,” Makoulis says. “Where my family is from is like an hour from the Albanian border — life comes at you there at a different speed.” To celebrate the Makoulis family’s mountainside origins, the couple opted for a more pared-down interior scheme.

“We thought about the region and what that color palette could look like, especially the old buildings you might find dotting the mountains” Schneider says, adding that a lot of warm neutrals provide the base for the space, with materials like stone, marble, plaster, and wood referencing the type of architecture in these parts of Greece. There’s a stone feature wall, a marble bar, and wood tables and chairs over polished cement floors. But the space is grand in its own way: there are high ceilings, long hallways, and a wood-burning oven.

An old-school tavern and the warm energy you might enjoy there is another source of inspiration, as is family. “As this project has evolved, this has become really personal to me,” Makoulis says. Growing up, he joined his family in many Greek taverns both here in New York and back in Greece, where he would often find framed personal photos all over the walls or behind the cash register. He also loved seeing kitschy travel posters decorating these convivial spaces. And he wanted to bring that energy to Gus & Marty’s, so he and Schneider went through his mom’s archives of family photos, scanned them, and they’re now on the walls of this brand-new dining room. His dad visited the space pre-opening and was taken aback by this homage.

“This is a full-circle moment for us,” Makoulis adds. “And it tells a story about our Greek immigrant heritage.”

3. Don’t expect eggs — unless you’re craving fish eggs.

Schneider and Makoulis built their NYC dining bonafides with the success of Egg Shop, their brunch-friendly chainlet of yolk-obsessed restaurants. But don’t expect that same commitment to omelets and breakfast sandwiches with this Williamsburg project. In fact, even though there’s a decidedly Greek ethos behind Gus & Marty’s, it tries to evade the specificity of something like Egg Shop.

“I’m not necessarily creating this for the Greek crowd,” Makoulis explains, adding that his upbringing in Brooklyn as well as working in the New York restaurant scene have both influenced the vision for Gus & Marty’s. “I want this to speak to the folks who may not have had the Greek experience that we’re trying to convey.” And maybe the best way to describe it is that it’s Greek-ish, thanks to some playful reimagining of classic recipes. With one look at the menu, you’ll realize that you could easily see every dish here at another Greek restaurant. There’s moussaka, there’s gyro, there’s gigantes beans, and slow-roasted lamb. But the Gus & Marty’s team also tweaked some classic dishes when the spirit moved them.

For example, the taramasalata dip is topped with caviar, which speaks to New Yorkers’ current obsession with fish roe. They’re also bringing street-food-esque concepts into the restaurant space: there are cones of fried fish inspired by an Athens restaurant that specializes in it. And one of the most iconically indulgent dishes — feta saganaki — gets a practical update: They’ve wrapped it in phyllo and then drenched it with thyme-infused honey. 

“Who doesn’t love cheese saganaki?” Makoulis says. “But if you don’t eat it right away, it becomes rubbery. By wrapping it in phyllo, we hope to avoid that.”

For Makoulis and Schneider, these inflections aren’t meant to be so overt that they might define the restaurant as fusion. “We wanted to play with tradition,” Schneider explains. “We want to honor Greek food, but if we found that we wanted to try something else, we had the freedom to do that.”

4. Drinks are a lesson in Greek spirits.

Like the food menu, the drink list is tightly edited. There are classic cocktails like Negronis and martinis.  But if you want to sample a bit of Greek drinking culture, there’s ouzo, mastiha, and a variety of beers and wines from the old country. The wine menu is particularly exciting if you’re keen on low-intervention vino. Makoulis and Schneider curated what they hope will be a rotating selection of wines; most of which feature varietals you may have never heard of, including roditis and xinomavro, one of the most ubiquitous red grapes in Greece.

5. There will soon be a daytime component.

For now, Gus & Marty’s is only open for dinner. But there are plans to open during the day, when they’ll serve take-out coffee and Greek pastries so you can live out your Greek breakfast fantasies while perusing the farmer’s market at McCarren Park. Because it doesn’t matter where you are in Greece, there’s always time for a frothy freddo espresso and a flaky piece of bougatsa.

Gus & Marty’s is currently open Wednesday through Monday for dinner, with plans to eventually open on Tuesday and to offer takeout cafe service on the weekends.