On Irving Avenue, a new restaurant picks up the mantle from an old one; Café Ghia, built with the help of friends, aims to be a gathering place for its community and a beacon on a long-unused corner. And it’s been a year in the making.

Anna D’Agrosa once lived just half a block from this storefront, and every day admired the hand-painted signage above it for The Family Restaurant, which hadn’t operated in over ten years. Just a few years later, after quitting her job at a marketing agency to open her own café, D’Agrosa would end up back at that same corner every single day.

The Culture page of BushwickBK, which D’Agrosa founded and edited, helped her make that jump from office life. “I had all these great relationships, I had met so many people… it was just natural. When thinking about what next, I had marketing experience, and a lot of love for this neighborhood, and it seemed like as good a time as any to take a risk on my dream of opening a café.”

D’Agrosa describes co-owner Scott McGibney as her mentor. The two had known each other for a while; McGibney managed the nearby Northeast Kingdom and has owned local coffee shop Wyckoff-Starr for four years. He had already been thinking about opening a lunch spot in the neighborhood but still needed a partner when D’Agrosa sought him out for advice.

Shortly after their decision to join forces, they saw the space at the corner of Irving Avenue and Jefferson Street, and the plan came together.

The pair set to work, planning for a six-month process. As is often the case, the property had unpredictable issues and needed more work than expected.

“The amount of work that went into this was astronomical. We thought we’d come in here, move the bathroom, put some more plugs in, and clean it up,” said D’Agrosa. Construction took one year.

There was lots of bargain shopping and car borrowing, and neighborhood friends helped clean brick, paint, build the bar, and stain the floors. Local carpenter Matt Hogan designed and built the wood pass-through from the kitchen and shelves over the bar. McGibney did much of the woodwork himself.

Ghia will have its own signage, but it will take second fiddle to history. “That sign had to stay, it’s just beautiful,” said D’Agrosa of The Family Restaurant sign. It depicts Carlos Colón, the previous owner of the building, roasting a pig amid scenery from Orocovis, Puerto Rico, his home town. He opened the restaurant serving typical Puerto Rican food in 1986 and ran it with his daughters until his death in 1999.

“Everyone only ever has good things to say about Carlos,” said D’Agrosa. “We wanted to keep some of him here.”

Ghia focuses on “simple” food made by chef Cara Baker. Baker apprenticed on a small dairy farm in New Jersey for a year before taking the job at Ghia, and will use a plot at the community garden around the corner on Jefferson Street to grow some of the restaurant’s ingredients.

The menu is split between what the partners called “yummy, healthy” items, many of which are vegan, and “more indulgent” dishes featuring butter and meat. “Spreads and Breads” is a platter of grilled flatbread served with hummus, black-olive tapenade, and cauliflower-almond spread, all vegan and housemade. There are several sandwiches, first tested out at Wyckoff-Starr; so far the BLT is the favorite.

Baker is obsessed with the ingredients being just right, said D’Agrosa. “She makes her own mayonnaise, she makes the jams, roasts the tomatoes, she pickles things — it’s really important to her.”

And the name? It is Italian, but this has nothing to do with the menu.

“We made a list of things we loved, and I put my car on it — it’s a 1970 VW Karmann Ghia,” said McGibney. It was low on the list at first but eventually won out over the other possibilities.

The Ghia team is finally ready to get cooking — they’re now open for brunch and dinner every day. There’s coffee and tea, a short list of beer and wine, and free wifi with outlets for laptops.

“We haven’t left a five-block radius in months,” said D’Agrosa. “And now we really won’t.”