Sycamore Owner To Open New Ditmas Park Bar In Mamma Lucia Space

DITMAS PARK, BROOKLYN — Ditmas Park might get a new watering hole from the owner of its favorite dive bar-flower shop, state records show.

Sycamore Bar owner Kathie Jung Lee has filed a liquor license request for 1701 Foster Ave. on East 17th Street, according to the State Liquor Authority records.

Lee — also a co-owner of The Farm On Adderly, Cortelyou Road's farm-to-table restaurant — confirmed via email that she filed for the license but declined to comment further until the pending request was confirmed.

The space where Lee plans to open a new bar was once home to Mamma Lucia, an Italian restaurant where owner Giorgio Migliaccio and his family served up classic red sauce fare for more than 50 years.

Signs announcing Mamma Lucia's had closed appeared in its windows about two weeks before Lee applied for the liquor license on May 30, records show.

Sycamore is one of Ditmas Park's more famous bars with write-ups appearing in Edible, the New York Times and the New Yorker, to name a few.

The bar famously went to battle with the Health Department in 2017 over its right to sell flowers and serve booze in the same space.

Co-owners opened Sycamore in September 2008 looking for a place where they could mix-and-match businesses, co-owner Justin Israelson told Patch in 2012.

"This is the perfect place for boyfriend," Israelson joked. "If he's not in a fight, he can come in for flowers. If he is in a fight, he can come talk to bartender, realize he's wrong and then get flowers."