When Brickmen Kitchen + Bar opened in Uptown Kingston in 2023, its menu traveled widely. Korean barbecue ribs, fried plantain nachos, jerk chicken, sushi tacos, and tagliatelle bolognese all shared the stage. I wondered then what North Star guided its culinary navigation. Three years later, owner Dave Amato has an answer.
On October 8, the North Front Street restaurant will become Brickmen Cucina + Bar, with an Italian-American menu inspired by the food Amato grew up eating and the restaurants where he learned the business. The menu is still being finalized, but pasta, family recipes, and the kind of dishes that anchor a Sunday dinner will define its direction.
“That’s where my passion for food was born,” Amato says of meals at his parents’ and grandparents’ homes. Spaghetti and meatballs, chicken Parmesan, and antipasto were fixtures. They still have a hold on him: When his parents make spaghetti and meatballs or chicken parm today, they let him know, and he makes a point of going over.
Amato learned restaurant work alongside his father, Anthony “Red” Amato, at the family’s Italian restaurant on Ulster Avenue in the late 1980s and early ’90s. His father had previously opened Papa Joe’s, a 50-seat Kingston restaurant named for Dave’s grandfather. Amato’s family history will appear on the new menu in Red’s Meatballs, a recipe handed down through the generations.
After his father sold the Ulster Avenue restaurant, Amato stayed in the business. He worked for the Rolling Rock Cafes in Rhinebeck and Wappingers Falls, where he says he rose quickly to run both kitchens. He became a partner at Coyote Cafe, then opened Carmine’s in the space now occupied by Little Italy in Midtown Kingston. After selling Carmine’s, he served as director of operations for the Cosimo’s restaurant group.
Amato also owns The Cornell Restaurant + Bar on the Rondout waterfront. That restaurant opened in April 2025 after Amato rebranded his former Ole Savannah space, with a menu that draws from several cuisines. At Brickmen, he is narrowing the focus to the cooking that started his career. Jess Mino, who helped launch the Cornell, is general manager of both restaurants and a managing partner at Brickmen.
The change comes at a moment when Amato says diners are paying closer attention to the bill. “It’s gotten so expensive to live. People are watching what they spend,” he says. He expects the Italian-American menu to be more affordable than Brickmen’s current offerings, though prices and dishes have yet to be settled. He has also seen customers order fewer drinks over the past three years, a shift that matters to a restaurant with a substantial bar.
Brickmen’s name will remain. It honors Kingston’s brickmaking history and Amato’s grandfather Joe, who worked in the city’s brickyards before moving into the restaurant business as a maître d’ and bartender. Until now, that family connection has been most visible in the restaurant’s name and the historic brickyard photographs on its walls. The Cucina menu will bring it onto the plates.
Among the planned desserts are tiramisu, cannoli, and Amato’s original carrot cake recipe. Frozen yogurt will return, too, recalling the menu at the family’s Ulster Avenue restaurant. “Everything that comes around goes back around,” Amato says.
“We’re basically going back to my roots,” he says. He’s looking forward to spending his days around spaghetti and meatballs and chicken parm, though he jokes that his waistline may have reservations.
Brickmen will serve its current menu through October 4, then reopen as Brickmen Cucina + Bar with a ribbon cutting on October 8 at 5pm.
