The story got picked up by The New York Times and a bunch of other media outlets. By the time everything opened up and Pasta Louise was able to open, everyone in the neighborhood already knew who I was, which was pretty awesome. Pasta Louise opened in July 2020 in our first location; that’s now our takeout and café location.

Let’s go back to the beginning: your mac and cheese restaurant in California. Tell me about the experience of starting something so popular and, eventually, too big for its britches. 

My first restaurant was called Homeroom in Oakland, California. It was crazy. On the day we opened, we had a line that was two blocks long. People love mac and cheese, and no one else was doing it in the area. As it was my first restaurant, I had zero idea what I was doing. I was just trying to figure out how to do scheduling, ordering and hiring while also being so busy right away. It was a great learning experience. I definitely loved doing it. We grew to two locations and about a hundred employees really quickly. It was nuts, but it was also exhilarating.

Mac and cheese was never my true love. I did enjoy it, but it wasn’t the food I grew up eating. So, when I moved back to New York, the plan was never to open a huge restaurant like I had in California. I thought that was too much. My days were spent doing a lot of office work and dealing with the more boring parts of owning a business. So, the idea when I moved here was to start a place that was more of a small pasta takeout counter, which is what the original location was supposed to be. It’s sort of blossomed into this much bigger thing. Now, we have eighty employees and three locations, and it’s very similar to what I had in Oakland, with a takeout location and a full-service restaurant.

This one is more personal. It is based on my family’s recipes. Louise was my grandmother. I know we’re in New York City, but Park Slope honestly feels like more of a community than Oakland did. I know everyone’s kids’ and dogs’ names. I know all of our regulars. In Oakland, I was there all the time, and I definitely had some sense of community, but it wasn’t nearly as strong.

So you’re still cooking Louise’s original recipes? 

Yes! It’s definitely a mix. We have a lot of our amazing cooks and chefs come up with many of the recipes here, but the meatballs we have are my great-grandmother’s recipe. I started making those when I was six years old. The tomato sauce recipe is hers. My dad’s roasted red pepper and cream sauce is on the menu. The recipes are all based on things that my grandmother would cook.

At the restaurant, we have this thing called the Grandma Test. When we’re coming up with new recipes to put on the menu, it has to be something that, if a grandmother walks in, they would recognize every ingredient in the dish. We’re not doing anything fancy or intricate. We do try to make things a little elevated, but for the most part, it has to be things that the grandmas would recognize.

Tell me a bit more about expanding into a cocktail bar. What was appealing to you about cocktails?

The cocktail bar was a bit of an impulsive decision. I was walking around the neighborhood with a friend, and we had nowhere to sit and have a drink. We passed the old Parish [bar] space, and there was a For Rent sign in the window. The next day, I called the real estate agent. My business partner, Dan, was on vacation, and by the time he got back, I said, “We’re opening a cocktail bar!” And he said, “Great, let’s do it!” It wasn’t part of the long-term plan to open a cocktail bar, but the neighborhood needed it, and we thought it would be really fun to open a more grown-up version of Pasta Louise. We have this super kid-friendly restaurant, and we love having all the kids around, but we wanted to see what would happen if we tried doing this elevated experience where parents could go out on date nights and leave the kids at home.

There are a lot of places like this in Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens where you’re not going to bring your kids, like Clover Club. 

Right. It’s not said outright, but it’s unspoken that some places, and I’d say most cocktail bars, are just not for the kids. 

I never planned on talking about how this was a grown-up place. It’s funny because, for all of the media outlets that have interviewed me about Bar Louise, it’s the one thing they really want to focus on. I guess it’s because it’s in Park Slope. We were on Fox 5 last night, and the main headline was “Adults Only Cocktail Bar.” I was like, “Oh, man.” You can bring your kids if you want. Kids aren’t banned from the space, but we don’t allow strollers because it’s a small area, and we don’t have high chairs. But you can still bring them!

Pasta Louise offers the Pasta Rose scholarship for college tuition for high school students who have lost a parent to cancer. That’s a pretty unique and incredible offering from a pasta restaurant. How has it been received? What has the result of the scholarship been so far?

The scholarship has been very well received by the community. When we tell people about it, they are so willing to donate. We have a few customers in particular who help us raise money, which is so incredible. One guest, who comes in all the time, told me that she wanted to have her birthday party at the restaurant and to pay for the whole thing, but she wanted all the money her guests paid for their meals to go toward the scholarship.

It’s great when we have guests come up with their own creative ways to make money for it. Unfortunately, everybody knows someone who has had cancer and recovered or has passed from it. 

The applicants are incredible. We do a lot of work to reach out to all the principals around Brooklyn schools. The hardest part is the outreach to the applicants and ensuring enough people know about it beyond the Park Slope area. You can live in Brooklyn or go to school here as long as you have some attachment to Brooklyn. It’s so hard to choose the winners. We usually have a nice, big pool of applicants. We have a committee that helps decide the winners. The committee is composed of managers from the restaurant and people from the community. Usually I send them my top five applicants, and they send them back in order, with reasons why they chose that order.

It’s a pretty rigorous application process. They have to write several essays, get a recommendation from a teacher, and submit a transcript. We’re not just choosing the students with the highest grades. Last year, our second place winner, named Symphony, had the most amazing story. She would come up with all of these positive ways to help people in her school. She had this affirmation wall in the girls’ bathroom, and people would write things like, “You look so beautiful today.” She helped students in her school find prom dresses. She organized this event where people could donate dresses so everyone had something nice to wear to prom.

I wish she’d been my friend in high school. 

I totally agree! We always treat the winners and their families to dinner so we can meet them in person. When I met Symphony in person, she was even more incredible than her application could show. 

What’s next for you and the Louise empire of Park Slope? 

Nothing! Nothing is next. Every time I say that, everyone says, “Yeah, right,” but I am done. Three is enough. My rule has always been that I have to be able to ride my bike to each location. I now have three locations that I can ride my bike to. I would like to just quit while I’m ahead. Maybe in five years, my answer will change, but for now, when you ask, “What’s next?” I am still replying, “Nothing new.”