Mineola’s downtown will soon have cooking classes and a grab-and-go Italian restaurant.
At last Wednesday’s Board of Trustees meeting, Victor McNulty and Simone Pulieri were awarded special zoning permits to open new businesses in Mineola.
McNulty, the owner of The Cooks Studio, was approved to bring his business’s fourth location to Mineola. Currently, he has locations in Hicksville, Amityville, and Patchogue.
The Cooks Studio offers recreational cooking classes for people looking for a fun night out, McNulty said. Classes are typically two hours long, begin with a 30-minute demonstration, involve an hour of cooking, and end with 30 minutes for people to eat the meal they make. Participants can order a glass of wine or beer while eating, McNulty said.
Pulieri similarly received approval to open his first location, a Chipotle-esque Italian restaurant called Pastaru, an Italian slang word for pasta maker.
Customers will be able to select the shape of pasta, type of sauce, protein, and any additional ingredients they would like while ordering at a counter, Pulieri said. The restaurant will have a few tables, but will primarily function as a takeaway restaurant, he said. Pulieri plans for all pasta and sauce to be homemade and said he will sell fresh pasta and sauce separately for customers to cook at home as well.
Both business owners said they hoped to be open before the end of 2025. They had to apply for special permits because they involved food use, public assembly, and cooking, Mayor Paul Pereira said.
“Anytime that someone puts their dreams on the line and invests a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of blood, sweat and tears in [a business], and they choose Mineola as the place to do that, we can only be grateful,” the mayor said. He thanked both owners for choosing Mineola as the place to open their businesses during the meeting.
After the permits were awarded, the board unanimously approved an amendment to the village’s parking code to increase clarity. Now, residents will need to move their cars off the street if two or more inches of snowfall are predicted or if the mayor declares a snow emergency so that the Department of Public Works is able to adequately spread salt and plow the roads.
Though residents have always been required to remove their cars from the street when two or more inches of snow fall, Pereira said, this amendment was meant to increase clarity, especially since the village has not seen heavy snow as frequently in recent years.
Residents can move their cars into municipal parking lots and garages without being ticketed during these times, the mayor said.
Looking ahead to warmer months, the board approved a request from NYU Langone to hold a biweekly farmer’s market on Thursdays in its parking lot.
The markets will run from June 12 to Oct. 9 between 10 a.m. to 3 p.m and will be open to the public.
