flavor
and still i rise again
Throughout a year of personal loss and professional upheaval, Sara Brancato, owner of The Dale in Mountaindale, New York, has emerged with a tenacity and inner-strength she never thought possible.By JILLIAN SCHEINFELD Photography SHAYNA LOHMANN
IT’S HEART-WRENCHING to imagine losing your father to disease during an earth-shattering pandemic. Couple that with the day-to-day responsibilities of managing a restaurant in a tiny Catskills town during that same pandemic, and there you have the current juncture of Sara Brancato, owner of
The Dale, an Italian restaurant and bar in Mountaindale, New York. Brancato runs front-of-house at The Dale, a restaurant and gathering space in the hamlet of Mountaindale that has endured an onslaught of structural and mythological woes since day one. With her intense brown-eyed gaze and quick-paced inflection, Brancato emits her Italian-American ancestry’s vibrant and bullish energy. She inherited the boyish chill side from her dad and the feisty feminine from her mother. If her story were ever to be told on screen, the only apt casting would be Marisa Tomei, with whom she bears a striking resemblance in countenance and spirit. The former fashion and food publicist grew up in the tight-knit community of Staten Island and lived in Brooklyn for almost a decade before she found her way upstate after enduring the family tragedy of her younger brother’s stroke, which left him afflicted with severe brain damage.
Shortly after, Brancato moved in with her family to help take care of her brother and began to venture up to the Catskills for a reprieve. It’s here where she and her partner (in love and vocation), Alex Wilson, met. In the early stages of dating, Wilson brought Brancato to this vacant building in Mountaindale and orated his vision of creating a homey Italian restaurant that was sophisticated but accessible. “From that day, I threw myself into creating The Dale and was determined to make it work,” she says. “It was the first thing I had done since taking care of my brother, and I wanted this place to open no matter what. It was simply a project I could not walk away from.”
From opening day to now, there have been many reasons to give up on The Dale. For starters, it’s set in a small town that was still finding its footing even before the economic wreckage of COVID-19. And let’s be real; the restaurant business is not exactly a walk in the park. “Even if the pandemic didn’t happen, I would probably tell you how we’re still struggling to make it here in this environment. It’s really difficult in normal circumstances to run a restaurant; the margins are extremely slim,” she says. To top it off, the chef they hired quit on the first week, the building itself is mired in town legend of being cursed, and neither Brancato nor Wilson knew how to make pizza.
Despite the cards stacked against her, Brancato rose to the occasion. “My father Dominick was my mentor and biggest cheerleader. He was a big part of what made me see this through. He even sent me to his business friends who would “Shark Tank” me and say I was crazy to go through with this. But when my father visited this town, he immediately saw what a beautiful opportunity it was, and he believed in the community.”
It was in these moments of agony and deep uncertainty that Brancato’s community-building superpowers evolved in full-force. She faced insurmountable decisions, from whether or not to leave The Dale behind, to if she should take the risk of moving back to Staten Island to help look after her father, mother, and brother — who were all COVID-positive.
If she could reap any personal gain from this nightmare, it would be the self-realization of her extraordinary resilience. “My whole world collapsed. When you have a loss, sometimes you gain something, and what I’ve gained is my inner strength. We rise, we fall, that’s life. But this time, the more I fell, the more I rose.”
“MY WHOLE WORLD COLLAPSED.
WHEN YOU HAVE A LOSS, SOMETIMES YOU GAIN SOMETHING, AND WHAT I’VE GAINED
IS MY INNER STRENGTH.
WE RISE, WE FALL, THAT’S LIFE”
It comes to no surprise that Brancato’s fortitude had been years in the making. Her upbringing was centered around boisterous family dinners and connecting to the community by way of her father’s mayoral-like status in Staten Island. Dominick was the CEO of non-profit NYCID, a Board of Manager of YMCA, and a member of the Staten Island Borough and Staten Island Rotary Club. “He was all about bringing together the disenfranchised and was always thinking about integrating communities without tension,” she says. “We felt what the void was in Mountaindale, and a lot of places in the Catskills, is offering quality food with integrity, but also being attainable for everyone.”
With some thrifted wood, recycled Parisian-style lamps, and a bucket of paint, The Dale opened in February of 2020 with a brand new team whom she now describes as family. It was this restaurant family that carried her through the recent months of Dominick’s passing and kept The Dale up-and-running under New York State guidelines throughout COVID-19.
Throughout global chaos and personal devastation, Brancato and The Dale team committed to weather the storm and stay open during the pandemic for the community’s sake. “Our community needed food and space. We felt that was our duty, no matter how hard things got,” she says.
To accommodate the current state of affairs, they built an outdoor garden space, developed make-your-own pizza kits and a frozen pizza recipe for local families, and embraced curb-side pick-up and delivery.Fortunately, the community continues to show up each Thursday-Sunday of summer, and the place gets as packed as it can be during a pandemic.
To put it simply, the community needs The Dale just as much as The Dale needs the community, and Brancato couldn’t agree more. “If you asked me a decade ago what I wanted to accomplish in my life, it would be impacting community on a non-grandiose local level. That’s what gives me the ultimate satisfaction. It’s only pizza, but it does put a smile on people’s faces.”