Farideh Sadeghin is a writer and recipe developer based in Brooklyn. In this series, she explores New York City neighborhoods through their food and histories.
I lived in Greenpoint for about two years with a couple of friends down by McGolrick Park. A Polish family owned our six-unit building, and we lived in the only unit that wasn’t occupied by members of that family.
But the family’s matriarch passed away while we lived there, and within four months, the family decided to sell the entire building, which left my friends and I looking for new housing. Since we were no longer able to afford Greenpoint ourselves, we decided to leave the neighborhood.
That was about 10 years ago now and, since leaving, I’ve seen the neighborhood continue to change. Bars and restaurants that were favorites among my friends and I have since shut down. One of the bars that I was going to hit up for this very adventure, Irene’s Place on Manhattan Avenue, suddenly closed up shop after over 44 years in business.
I decided to explore Greenpoint and what was left of its Polish offerings with someone who not only knows the neighborhood, but also knows Polish food and could highlight some favorites.
My friend Agatha Kulaga, co-founder of Very Good Hospitality and the former CEO of the popular bakery Ovenly, has lived in Greenpoint for over 20 years. She grew up with Polish immigrant parents in New Britain, Connecticut, and moved to Greenpoint precisely because the neighborhood was Polish and she could speak the language.
Kulaga has witnessed the neighborhood’s steady changes over the past two decades. The number of Polish residents in the northern Brooklyn neighborhood has shrunk dramatically in the last 20 years. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, from 2000 to 2010, the number of Polish-born Greenpoint residents had decreased from 13,660 to 7,873, and that number keeps dropping.
While gentrification and rising housing costs are significant factors in the decline of Greenpoint’s Polish…
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