Georgia Fulton inside her new-old restaurant, Sam’s.
Picture: Jingyu Lin
Followers of Sam’s, the pizzeria that has been round since 1930, have lengthy considered the restaurant as a ticking clock. Louis Migliaccio, the beloved curmudgeon who ran the place all however single-handedly, usually groused about his aching bones. However he didn’t seem to have any succession plan in place. Eventually, Sam’s was seemingly fated to shutter. Towards all odds, the restaurant has discovered an inheritor obvious: Sam’s savior just isn’t a deep-pocketed restaurant group and even an skilled restaurant proprietor. It’s Georgia Fulton, a younger Australian whose chief résumé credit score is as a server on the Lengthy Island Bar close by. She started working there simply months after its present iteration debuted in 2013 and stayed for 12 years, changing into as a lot a fixture within the place as any of its bartenders.
“I didn’t have an concept to open my very own place,” Fulton says. “I shocked myself once I first walked in. I mentioned, ‘I’ve to one way or the other commit to creating this occur.’ It might break my coronary heart to listen to that it was closed, or that it was taken over by some company restaurant group.”
Sam’s would be the newest in a string of restaurant resurrections and renovations, however in contrast to Gage & Tollner, Le Veau d’Or, or Ferdinando’s Focacceria, Sam’s just isn’t a culinary icon, neither is it terribly well-known. As a substitute, it’s cherished by an ardent contingent of fiercely devoted regulars who respect its frozen-in-time high quality. This group received’t hear a phrase towards its basic red-sauce-joint menu or Migliaccio’s idiosyncratic, “my approach or the freeway” strategy to hospitality. (I’m one in all these individuals.) “Sam’s is an archetype,” says St. John Frizell, co-owner of Gage & Tollner. “You couldn’t be wherever else on the planet however Italian American Brooklyn. However what time are you? Anytime from 1935 to the present day — it’s onerous to say.”
Fulton didn’t eat at Sam’s till 2021. As soon as inside, she was hooked. Decided to save lots of the place, she grew to become a daily, eating early on weekends, and slowly began to work her approach by means of the voluminous menu. She additionally started engaged on Migliaccio. “I used to be fairly obsessive about it, however I needed to be refined,” she says. “He at all times put me in a sales space. That’s how I knew Lou favored me.”
For the six months earlier than Sam’s closed in 2025, Fulton labored alongside Migliaccio, slowly studying the enterprise — or no less than Migliaccio’s model of the enterprise. “I believed I used to be an analog particular person, however this was to date past analog,” she says. Each order and invoice was written by hand; tickets have been walked again personally to the kitchen workers. “You get three tables and you might be within the weeds, as a result of you need to do the whole lot,” Fulton provides. “I’m making an attempt to make martinis and Lou is yelling at me as a result of I’m chilling the glasses.”
Fulton persevered, which isn’t any small feat: The restaurant was based in 1930 by Migliaccio’s great-uncles, brothers Danny and Sam D’Arco. It was named after Sam, who died earlier than the place opened. Mario Migliaccio, an Italian immigrant and the D’Arcos’ nephew, entered the image in 1950 as a dishwasher. He labored at Sam’s for six many years, retiring in 2009. Louis Migliaccio (who declined to be interviewed for this story, in fact) took over after that, and he’s been entrance and middle ever since. There have been cooks within the kitchen, however they weren’t seen. An extra waiter has assisted Migliaccio right here or there over time, however none lasted lengthy.
“Her superpower is to cope with grumpy outdated guys,” Adam Kolesar, a longtime Sam’s common, says of Fulton. “She’s bought that sensibility dialed in.”
Now, Fulton is within the ultimate levels of renovating the area, primarily making Sam’s a brighter model of itself. An exquisite, Brooklyn-built again bar, with its gingerbread cover — lengthy buried behind a massing of bottles, knickknacks, framed photos, authorities signage, and recordsdata — now shines. There shall be barstools for the primary time in Sam’s historical past. The again room, which was usually darkish and used just for massive events, will now be open for enterprise. There are plans to revive the murals, which date from the Nineteen Forties. The outdated picket phone cubicles and telephone-book stand are staying — although one sales space was moved upstairs to make room for an extra barstool.
Different particulars couldn’t be saved: Many of the kitchen was eliminated to make approach for brand new tools, with the crucial exceptions of the brick pizza oven and an unlimited cast-iron flour mill made by the Peerless Bread Machine Co. of Sidney, Ohio. “You couldn’t eliminate it should you wished to,” says Fulton.
Different design adjustments owe a debt to Lengthy Island Bar. (Joel Tompkins, a Lengthy Island Bar co-owner, is an investor right here.) Fulton had a rail constructed to divide the bar from the tables, making a structure very similar to that at LIB. “It seems prefer it’s at all times been there,” Fulton factors out.
The meals will nonetheless be red-sauce Italian, however paring down the 90-ish-item menu was no simple job. “We wished the essence of it to remain the identical,” Fulton says, “to positively do issues which can be Sam’s.” She employed Andrew Halitski — who was a sous-chef at Flora Bar and ran La Rose Pizza, a Detroit-style pizzeria, on Smith Avenue for a short while — to be the chef. (“It was like trying again in time,” Halitski says of his first scan of the unique menu.) The brand new roster of dishes will embody just a few alternatives every of appetizers, pastas, salads (together with a Sam’s Salad and a Lou’s Salad), meat dishes (together with the varied parms), desserts, and, in fact, pizza. Fulton grew to become notably intrigued by a humble relish listed as “celery and olives” on the outdated menu. “It was simply Key Meals undressed celery and olives straight from the bag. It was like a portray. I believed, If I can re-create that and make it scrumptious …”
Fulton additionally plans to maintain up Sam’s long-standing relationships to the few remaining culinary holdouts on Courtroom Avenue. She’s going to get bread from Caputo Bakery (established in 1904), meat from Staubitz Market (1917) and cookies from Courtroom Pastry Store (1948).
The menu at Sam’s at all times listed a big selection of basic cocktails, normally blended by Migliaccio himself. On the new Sam’s, cocktails will take a extra central position, and there shall be extra wine selections, together with a “Sam’s home crimson.” The outdated regulars — one, Sam Premutico, is one other investor — are already onboard with the brand new path. “I see this as an annex of Lengthy Island Bar for individuals with children,” Kolesar says, “Sam’s being a complement, a synergistic Brooklyn expertise.”
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When you desire to learn in print, you may also discover this text within the April 20, 2026, difficulty of
New York Journal.
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When you desire to learn in print, you may also discover this text within the April 20, 2026, difficulty of
New York Journal.
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