When Chef Paul D'Avino first started searching the five boroughs for a space to open his own restaurant, he envisioned opening an izakaya, or the Japanese version of a neighborhood bar. That was, until he found the storefront at 272 Third Ave.

The corner space, it turns out, was across the street from where his great-grandfather had settled when he came to Brooklyn from Italy in 1901. It also happened to be the site of a longtime Italian-American grocery and, before that, a pasta factory.