The last holdout of Little Spain

El Faro owner Mark Lugris

By Alyssa Galella

While you’re eating at El Faro, a landmark Spanish restaurant in the West Village, expect to see a lot of Japanese tourists, whether they’re taking photos in the cobblestone street outside the brick establishment or taking in a meal of tapas.

“We’ve been written up in Japanese guidebooks of New York and in Japanese magazines,” said owner Mark Lugris, 45, of East Setauket, N.Y., who is baffled by his restaurant’s popularity in Asia. Indeed, a Japanese guidebook called “Compass*Compass” proclaims, in halting English, “El Faro has become a restaurant that isn’t there to just serve customers, but also a place for them to feel as if it is a home, in which they grew up…many people have a lot of happy memories here.” Lugris, whose father Andrés owned El Faro before him, practically did grow up in the restaurant, at the corner of Greenwich and Horatio streets, and is always willing to discuss his own happy memories.

Tell me a little bit about the history of El Faro and “Little Spain,” as this area of the West Village was called back then.

El Faro was opened in 1927 by Manuel Rivas and Edwardo Cabana. There was a Spanish boarding house upstairs and more across the street. Spanish sailors from northwest Spain would jump ship around 23rd Street; so, by the piers on the West Side was a Galician neighborhood. They were attracted to this area because there was always work down here in the meatpacking houses or at the piers. The owners of the boarding houses would also help people find carpentry work. I’ve also heard that a few living members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade [American volunteers who fought against Franco in the Spanish Civil War] said they’d meet at El Faro before they left for Spain.

So what happened to the Spanish community in the area?

Galicians weren’t averse to change, so they ended up just blending in gradually. Most of the Spanish people in the neighborhood became more affluent and moved on to greener pastures. Many of them also intermarried with the Puerto Rican community. There was a social club called Casa Galicia on West 14th Street that sponsored dances with Puerto Rican girls because they were citizens and could get papers. My mom is Puerto Rican, and she and her three sisters all married Galicians.

The Spanish community needed the Puerto Rican community to become legitimate. They blended really well, and the relationships that were born out of necessity became wonderful.

How did your father, Andrés, come to own the restaurant?

My father came here from Galicia in 1949, and his father brought him to El Faro to get a job as a dishwasher. He scrubbed pots and washed dishes for a week, but then they had no more work for him. So he went to Granados, another Spanish restaurant at MacDougal Street and West Third, to be a dishwasher there. Granados was the first tapas restaurant in New York—they called them “quarter orders” or “half orders.” The owner, Lorenzo de Granados, took a liking to my dad and prepped him to be a chef for 10 years. Lorenzo heard the owners of El Faro were retiring and going to Spain and, great mentor that he was, he let my dad know. My dad and a waiter at Granados named José Perez bought El Faro in 1959, for just $4,000.

What was El Faro like back when your father owned it?

There were a lot of writers, poets and artistic people around. The writer James Baldwin used to hang out at El Faro, and he based a character in his book “Another Country” on my dad. Kurt Vonnegut was also a regular, and he got along really well with my dad. Lucille Ball, Marlon Brando, Kurt and Michael Douglas, Bill Murray, Michael Keaton and Andy Rooney would also come in.

Did you spend a lot of time here as a kid?

I grew up in the Bronx and Queens, but I would spend all day and night sometimes at the restaurant. My sons are 10 and 12, and they do everything that I used to do as a kid, like jumping on the seats in the booths. They love to come to the restaurant, and they call me up and ask how business is doing. I never really thought I’d work here, though. That was the last thing from my mind.

How did you end up taking over the restaurant from your father, then?

My dad had an eye injury and couldn’t see very well anymore. He realized it was time to move on when he was pouring a drink for a customer and he was actually pouring it all over the bar, because he couldn’t see. He offered me the restaurant in 1995. I was playing professional soccer for the Charlotte Eagles at the time, but I was at the tail end of my career. I was 33 years old, and I was planning on getting married, so I said okay. I came here not knowing much, so my dad helped me a little and then said, “You’re on your own, kid,” and he and my mom retired to San Juan, Puerto Rico. It was quite a rollercoaster ride for me.

Has El Faro changed at all since you’ve taken over?

We have the same recipes and purveyors as when my dad owned the restaurant, although I reduced many entrees into tapas size in 2001. Some of the pots I serve the food in are over 50 years old. I try to keep everything intact, but it’s much easier to change than stay the same. Everything is a struggle to keep it as it was. Some things I can’t change, though: The building is a landmark because it was built in 1848, so I can’t have a sidewalk café or put up gaudy signs. I did put a TV up in the bar, and everyone flipped out. I have some people that have been coming here for 46 years, and some third-generation customers. When people say, “In 30 years, this place hasn’t changed,” it makes my day.

It seems like pretty much everything around El Faro has changed, though.

At night, the Meatpacking District used to be a scary place. The Horatio Block Association had to fight the prostitution and crack epidemic in the mid-’90s. Then it became trendy, and it’s like New York is losing its soul. The intimacy between a customer and a place is disappearing. How can I compare to Spice Market [a trendy Asian restaurant on West 13th Street]? Here, you see the owner, you know the owner, and I might give you a hug if you let me. Change is part of life, but it’s important that people understand what the neighborhood was before. We’ve seen all our neighbors priced out, but somehow we manage to still exist.

How do you manage to still exist?

We have an ironclad lease. It’s like the landlord is my mother, seriously. She was born in the building and lives upstairs. When the lease runs out, I go up there with a bottle of wine and we discuss it. And we give you value and courtesy and appreciate you. I’d say our clientele is 60 percent regulars and 40 percent newcomers. We’re creating new legions of fans!