Lucky us: Best dessert winner - Take a Break and I'll Bake You a Cake - in the Crawl

 Take a Break and I'll Bake You a Cake "best dessert" winner in the Crawl

Now in Carroll Gardens! 

Check out the full article here  @NYDN - New York Daily News

Caputo's Reign in Carroll Gardens and the Crawl! Caputo Bakery and Caputo's Fine Foods

Honored to have both Caputo's in Carroll Gardens-Cobble Hill Crawl on Oct. 20, 5-8 p

Thanks, @DNAinfo, for this wonderful piece. Tickets for the Crawl: bit.ly/Oct20Crawl-tickets

Italian Shops on Court Street Share 'Caputo' Name But No Relation

By Nikhita Venugopal | April 25, 2014 7:04am

@nkvenugopal

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Caputo's Fine Food and Caputo's Bakery

CARROLL GARDENS — A common family name in Italy has found local fame in Carroll Gardens, where two Court Street businesses share the name as well as a love of bread and cheese. 

Customers often assume Caputo's Bake Shop and Caputo's Fine Foods, the last of a few surviving Italian shops in the neighborhood, are owned by the same family, but the two businesses and households are not related, the owners said.

Caputo's Bake Shop manager James Caputo, 42, said people often call his shop and ask for the other Caputo’s, which is famous for its fresh-made mozzarella. 

Caputo’s great-grandfather opened the bakery in 1904 after moving to Brooklyn from Sicily. The shop was moved to 329 Court St. years later, where it makes dozens of varieties of bread, as well as cookies and pastries.

Just six blocks away is Caputo’s Fine Foods at 460 Court St., which offers tubs of olives, fresh and dried pastas, oils, sauces and an array of meats and cheeses, including the famous mozzarella made daily.

Giuseppe Caputo opened the shop in 1973, just one year after he moved to the country from Mola di Bari, Italy, according to his son, Frank Caputo, 51, who has managed the shop for the past 15 years.

The younger Caputo makes Fine Foods’ 700-to-800-pound supply of mozzarella each week using a recipe he learned from his father, who died last month, he said.

The two businesses have another connection — Frank Caputo’s father worked in the bakery for a few months before he opened the fine foods shop, both Caputos said.

Both James and Frank Caputo came into their respective family businesses after they ventured into the world of finance and banking, but eventually realized their passion lay with food.

“My heart was always here. Always, always here,” said bakery owner Caputo, who worked as an equity trader for more than a decade.

Frank Caputo joined the business after turning down a job at Chase Bank.

“It is stressful,” he said of running the Italian fine foods shop.

Carroll Gardens was once a predominantly Italian neighborhood but that population has shrunk in the decades the Caputos have been in business.

“The bakeries that didn’t change to the neighborhood just didn’t survive,” said James Caputo. “As the neighborhood changed, we had to adapt."

Caputo’s Bake Shop made about 12 varieties of bread when it opened but now bakes more than 100 kinds, including organic and non-genetically modified varieties.

Between the two Caputo families, there are five sons ranging from toddlers to college students. But neither Frank nor James is sure any of their children will carry on the family legacy.

“Running a business like this is a huge responsibility,” said James Caputo, who was grateful his parents allowed him to pursue his own path before taking over the family business.

“At the end of the day, I take such pride in it,” he said.

August Laura - a Carroll Gardens daughter comes back with awesome drinks!

Thanks, August Laura, for joining us at Tastes of Brooklyn - here's a review in the Villlage Voice

Get a Taste of Italian Spirits at New Carroll Gardens Cocktail Bar August Laura

FRIDAY, JUNE 10, 2016 AT 2:30 P.M.

BY ALICIA KENNEDY

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Alyssa Sartor is convinced her brand-new Carroll Gardens bar, August Laura (387 Court Street, Brooklyn; 718-858-5483), found her.

"My grandfather actually grew up four blocks away," the New Jersey–born bartender tells the Voice. She didn’t know that until showing her mom the space, which she and fiancé/business partner, Frankie Rodriguez, then decided to christen August Laura — her grandfather’s name.

Appealing to the quiet neighborhood where they’re located (just a couple of blocks from Frankies 457), they’ve created a very short menu of classic Italian cocktails and fresh takes by Sartor.

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You can order a perfectly poured Amaretto Sour or try the Villa Amalfi (modeled after a dessert she loves served at a cousin’s New Jersey restaurant). The You Always Remember Your First combines limoncello, prosecco, and Lambrusco (based on the first drink Sartor ever had: red wine and Sprite).

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Sartor grew up "on a bar stool," she says, which explains her ability to execute lowbrow concepts in a highbrow, worth-the-$12 way. Her father has owned dive bar R Jays Pub in Cliffside Park (where the couple raided the basement for some of August Laura’s glassware) for 35 years. Sartor started tending bar eight years ago by pretending she’d worked there, and the little lie paid off, as she’s since worked at Golden Cadillac and the Bar Room.

Rodriguez — "an original New Yorker," he notes — has been working in the industry since 1989, a veteran of high-volume '90s clubs like the Palladium, Underground, and Club USA. He most recently served as manager of Death & Co., and it was that Ravi DeRossi connection that brought them to the August Laura location, which had previously been an outpost of the Bourgeois Pig.

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August Laura's space is a light, warm combination of gray, natural wood, and deep blue. They’ve already established a friendship with a nearby antiques dealer who now sometimes drops by with new décor. Although the doors only opened last week, the neighborhood has already happily welcomed the couple. They’re currently still living in the West Village, but might make a move soon just so that their dog and cat — Achilles and Whiskey — aren’t left alone as much.

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By taking their downtown experiences to a quiet neighborhood, Sartor and Rodriguez have created an unpretentious place perfect for summer drinking. Touches like a tattoo-style portrait of a woman flipping the bird and skull-topped copper cocktail spoons bring some edge, but ultimately it’s a place for locals. "We’re gonna be that neighborhood bar," Rodriguez says. "And that’s what we want."

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D'Amico Coffee Roasters - Leading the Crawl - in the New York Times!

Carroll Gardens-Cobble Hill Crawl leaders - Joannie and Frank - in NYTimes! 

At D’Amico Coffee Roasters, Old and New Brooklyn Meet

Neighborhood Joint

By MATT McCANN MARCH 6, 2015

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Coffee With Neighborhood Joes

Coffee With Neighborhood Joes

CreditNicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

Late on a Saturday morning, a small flock of retired longshoremen settled around the low tables of D’Amico’s. A young woman with earbuds sat focused on her laptop as the old-timers took their seats around her, boxing her into a corner next to an enormous, gleaming coffee roaster. The old-timers bickered and dissected the day’s tabloids, cheerfully criticizing one another in vanishing Brooklyn vernacular. Occasionally, Frank or Tony would nudge the young woman for an opinion: “Is this guy nuts or what?” She would momentarily remove an earbud and nod, then go back online. Augie, a neighborhood electrician, punctuated the din with the stamping of coffee bags.

“Augie is a customer,” said Joan D’Amico, a co-owner of the Carroll Gardens coffee shop with her husband, Frank Jr., “but he’s not allowed to just sit here. We have to put him to work.”

D’Amico’s offers a rare equilibrium of old and new Brooklyn. The old-timers, who include Frank Sr. — the store’s owner until he passed it on to his son, in 1998 — are happy to chat with the younger customers bearing computers or strollers.

Like any number of small cafes along Court Street, D’Amico Coffee Roasters (at 309) brews six varieties of coffee each day and serves small meals and espresso beverages. But coffee roasting is the centerpiece of the business, which also has a wholesale outfit in Red Hook. Until recently, D’Amico’s was also a grocery store and deli, one of several mom-and-pop businesses in Carroll Gardens. “We’ve been roasting since Day 1,” Ms. D’Amico said. That wasn’t a problem for 64 years until, all of a sudden, it was.

One winter day a few years ago, a neighbor called 311 to complain about the smell of coffee roasting. (It should be noted that although freshly ground coffee smells like heaven, freshly roasting beans do not.) Agents from the city’s Department of Environmental Protection paid a visit. “We thought we were grandfathered in,” said Mr. D’Amico, who was told by an inspector that there was no such thing. A sign went up in the window: “O.K. you can stop calling D.E.P. and the Fire Department — we got your message.” The D’Amicos bought an afterburner to mitigate the smell, but it sat in storage while they tried to figure out how to fit it into the store. Then, the old roaster caught fire. It was clear that the time had come to acknowledge a changing neighborhood, and adjust the model. They closed for two months to renovate.

The old-timers, undeterred, installed themselves outside. “They’d get coffee across the street, and just sit out front,” Ms. D’Amico said. When loyal customers expressed horror that the business had been sold, the old-timers would set them straight. While Carroll Gardens, like much of brownstone Brooklyn, has been boutiquefied and bistroized, D’Amico’s has endured in part by keeping its old-school bona fides, which appeal to the hipster crowds, who revere all things vintage and connoisseurial, and the older generation, who like things the way they should be. And so the renovations carried some risk.

“There’s no way we can recreate this,” Mr. D’Amico said, speaking in front of a wall of photographs that show the store through the years. There’s a prominent portrait of Emanuele D’Amico, Frank Jr.’s grandfather, who established the business in 1948. Through all of the updates, a cozy atmosphere prevails. “That’s what we wanted to keep.”

See the article here