One afternoon in the middle of the pandemic, Manuel Torres discovered that this was, actually, the moment he had been waiting for. The quiet corner of Onderdonk Avenue had no right to possess one of the best burgers in the city, but in fact it did. This was local knowledge, spread by hyperlocal newswebsites and enjoyed by Philadelphia heavy metal bands, and perhaps accepted as fact. Along with the bar that made it, the burger’s end occurred sometime last year and, as a sign of its advance, the bar’s nondescript corner in Ridgewood was confused for Bushwick by major food blogs. 

“We tried to offer to buy the spot and they weren’t interested,” Torres says. “Then, COVID hit and I guess they saved our number.” Now he’s here and it’s called Mia Marie’s, named after Torres’ niece. The restaurant is a family affair, a project between him, his brother and their mother. As Torres puts it, she’s a figure looming in the background of the city’s nightlife scene and had powered the opening of a Lower East Side club called 13 Little Devils, described in the New York Post as “pretty wild” and by a 2011 court order as “shut down.”

Their sensibility animates their changes to the corner bar in Ridgewood, which now sports three TVs. (Number sported at Onderdonk & Sons: zero.) Torres is a man of the people and has the kind of charisma you would expect. Bright, enthusiastic, with a mustache that splices his face in two and voraciously full of dreams. The next bar, he tells me, will be named after his child, after he has one. He can be found most days haunting the bar, gladhanding his new regulars like a politician.  This is his first restaurant.