New BK Pasta Shop a “love letter to Bushwick”

By: Hannah Berman

Marie’s, a new pasta restaurant on Wyckoff Avenue, calls itself a “love letter to Bushwick.”

Chef and owner Miguel Trinidad opened the new restaurant in March, taking over the space formerly occupied by Caribbean restaurant Sally Roots. According to him, Marie’s is a love letter because the menu combines Italian dishes with the flavors that Bushwick residents know and love.

“If you walk up and down Wyckoff and Knickerbocker, you’ll see that there are Ecuadorian restaurants, Dominican restaurants, and these purely Latin restaurants all over the neighborhood,” Trinidad told BK Reader. “So I wanted to take the flavors of those places and put them into the pasta.”

These multicultural influences are visible throughout the menu: There’s a Jamaican lamb stew reminiscent of beef patties, a Cuban ropa vieja made from duck, and even an Instagrammable raviolo filled with chopped cheese, a favorite of New York bodegas.

To encourage the Bushwick community to form a connection with his new restaurant, Trinidad now hosts a free pasta night on the first Tuesday of every month. On these nights, customers can pick up a free bowl of penne with two sauces of their choice – a dish that would cost $18 to $19 at Marie’s on regular nights.

Trinidad himself is from the Lower East Side and has family in Brooklyn. This evening of free pasta is his effort to get neighbors more comfortable with a new two- to three-dollar restaurant in gentrified Bushwick.

“Unfortunately, gentrification is something we have to live with. It’s going to happen. The neighborhood is going to change,” Trinidad said. “That’s why this pasta party is so important to me, because it allows the community that already lives here to experience something new. And it’s important to me to preserve the history of this neighborhood and what it is – a Latino business, Afro-Latino – and to show the kids in the neighborhood that if I can do it, you can too.”

The first episode of Free Pasta Night took place last Tuesday. Marie’s announced the promotion via an Instagram post that reached an incredulous audience.

Roommates Ryan Cheam, Keegan Roeder and John DePoy live nearby in Bed Stuy. Roeder saw that Marie’s had opened and suggested they all go.

“We ended up canceling because we were all exhausted, I think,” Cheam said. “And then I looked at their Instagram and saw that they have free pasta every first Tuesday of the month. So I was like, ‘Let’s go next Tuesday instead.'”

“At first I thought he was joking,” Roeder said. “I thought he just wanted us all to get to Marie as soon as possible.”

But no, there was actually free pasta.

The event also welcomed members of the Bushwick community such as Orion Talley and his family.

“I live on Bleecker Street and as I was walking by I saw a sign that said ‘free pasta.’ I was very intrigued,” Talley said. “So I went in and asked, ‘What’s this about free pasta?’ And everyone seemed kind of confused and was like, ‘It’s free. That’s the deal.'”

Talley then passed on the news that a large group was coming to Marie’s for a pasta party.

“Now we’re all sitting here eating food, pasta, and not free food, which I think is the intention,” Talley said.

According to Trinidad, the event was a success.

“A lot of people from the community came, a few from neighboring neighborhoods,” he said. “Not only did they get the free pasta, but they also explored the menu. So it was exactly what I expected or hoped for.”

Marie’s is located at 195 Wyckoff Ave. The next free pasta night is August 6th from 5:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.