Café Mars – an unusual map of Italy, drawn in Gowanus

Café Mars occupies a former pasta factory and Italian grocer on 3rd Avenue in Gowanus, a stretch of Brooklyn once dense with Italian immigrant families. Co-chef Paul D'Avino chose the address partly because it sits across the street from the house his great-grandfather lived in after arriving from Campania in 1901, and that sense of inheritance runs through the whole project. Opened in May 2023 by D'Avino and co-chef Juan David Gracia, with sous chef Christopher Mueller and beverage director Sierra Chunko, the kitchen treats Italian cooking as a global language rather than a fixed set of regional rules, pulling in ideas from Italian-American diners, South American ports and Japanese itameshi kitchens alike. It holds a MICHELIN Bib Gourmand, the Guide's distinction for carefully cooked food at a fair price, awarded for 2023, 2024 and 2025.

01The room and the setting

Inside, the dining room runs in cobalt blue under neon lighting, closer in spirit to a retro-future diner than to a trattoria, with bright, chunky booths filling the main space.

At the bar, seats sit beneath a Phobos chair from studio apotroes, and the restaurant's looping neon sign is a design by Massimo Mongiardo. A gate by Tito Na Rua marks the entrance from 3rd Avenue, and a small back yard gives the room a quieter space before service begins.

02The chefs

D'Avino and Gracia built their partnership on résumés that cover wd~50, Aska and Rezdora between them, three very different New York kitchens. Before Café Mars, the team had looked across the city for a space without success, and it was only during the pandemic that the Gowanus address became available.

Insider tip

Closed Mon–Tue; walk-ins welcome early; book ahead via OpenTable for weekends.

Their stated approach is to use a telescope rather than a magnifying glass on Italian food: instead of zooming into one region's tradition, the menu gathers ideas from the whole of Italy and from everywhere Italian cooking has travelled since, from Buenos Aires to Tokyo.

03The cooking

Café Mars is known first for its wackier plates, but regular diners and critics alike tend to gravitate toward the more grounded dishes sitting alongside them: a tight list of pastas and a smoked pork rib parm that takes the rib through cold-smoking, steaming, roasting, breading and frying before it is sauced, broiled and served with a cold spaghetti salad on the side.

The kitchen's run of recognition has been steady since opening: a MICHELIN Bib Gourmand in 2023, 2024 and 2025, a Best Service NYC award in 2023, a place among the city's top fifteen restaurants for solo dining in 2024, and a nod as an OpenTable Icon and Diner's Choice winner since 2024. In 2025, Ponce Bank's Best of Brooklyn poll named it the borough's best Italian restaurant.

04What to order

Snacks set the tone: Castelvetrano olives suspended inside small, jewel-bright cubes of negroni jelly, and a garlic knot monkey bread finished with dollops of Parmesan butter. The muffaletta dim sum follows, sesame-glutinous dumplings stuffed with cured Italian meats and served with an olive salad dip, a dish that reads nothing like its name suggests.

For pasta, the girelle arrives dressed simply in lemon, lemon, lemon, capers and basil, and it is one of two dishes regulars say they order without fail, alongside the restaurant's parmesan-cured fluke crudo.

05Wine and drinks

Seated guests are greeted with a complimentary pour, typically a glass of prosecco or a zero-ABV alternative, before the ordering even begins. From there, Beverage Director Sierra Chunko's list runs to cocktails such as the Negroni squeezarato and the Blue Meanie, alongside dedicated amaro, grappa and bottle lists built to match the kitchen's wide-ranging menu.

06When to go and booking

As published on the restaurant's own site in October 2026, Café Mars is closed Monday and Tuesday, open Wednesday to Saturday from 5:30 to 9pm, and Sunday from 5:30 to 8pm. Reservations run through OpenTable, but walk-ins are genuinely welcome, particularly early in the evening; the bar is kept to an intentionally odd number of seats to encourage solo diners to eat there.

Larger groups are steered toward semi-private seating in the back room with a set, customisable menu, and booking well in advance is recommended. Each December the restaurant marks the holidays with its own take on the Feast of the Seven Fishes, this year themed around the islands of Italy.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.