Sunshine, Shoreline, and Spaghetti

On summer weekends before dawn, Dominican families in the Bronx and Washington Heights load up vans with chairs, coolers, and canopies, gearing up for a day at Harriman State Park, New York’s second-largest state park, also known as Los Siete Lagos (the Seven Lakes). Once the last cousin is reluctantly pulled from bed and squeezed into the van, an aunt rushes back to the apartment for a key ingredient: a pot of spaghetti in a homemade criollo red sauce, called empaguetadas. She grabs it from the stovetop, jumps into the passenger seat, slams the door, and they’re off, 45 minutes north into the woods.

Twenty years ago, Ronald Zorrilla made a similar journey to the beach, bouncing along dirt roads in his uncle’s pickup truck. “There would be about 15 of us cousins back there, just holding on tight,” recalls Zorrilla, who grew up in New York but spent summers in the Dominican Republic. “One cousin would tell stories, some were quiet, and one would clutch the large aluminum olla of spaghetti. Once, my cousin was fooling around and flew out when my uncle accelerated.”

“Those roads are paved now,” Zorrilla reflects. Moreover, around 70 percent of the Dominican Republic’s formerly public beaches are now owned by resorts, limiting access and offering only formal food vendors, making it difficult for working-class families who traditionally gathered for inexpensive beachside spaghetti. A 2017 article in Remezcla indicates that the tradition of empaguetadas now mostly exists at home parties and indoor events. Yet for the hundreds of thousands of Dominican immigrants in the U.S., the beach ritual of empaguetadas has found new life, especially along the summer shores of New York’s Los Siete Lagos.

On a particularly sweltering day this past June at Lake Welch — one of the Siete Lagos in Harriman State Park — Zorrilla was relaxing under a tent next to an unopened bottle of rum, chatting on the phone with family. 'We’re at Welch, enjoying an empaguetada!' he exclaimed into the phone. Around him, hundreds of families had set up canopies across a clearing and up a rocky slope beneath shady trees, all overlooking the sparkling 216-acre lake framed by lush hills. There were flags from Honduras, Colombian soccer jerseys, and plenty of dancing and laughter. In front of Zorrilla’s tent, a man lifted a huge red snapper from a cooler by the tail and placed it on a grill. A woman strolled by selling aguas frescas in small jugs, while the sounds of Mexican cumbias and Puerto Rican reggaeton blended from competing speakers, though Dominican music — including dembow, perico ripiao (a folk style of merengue), classic merengue, and bachata — dominated the atmosphere. Almost everywhere, massive steel pots of spaghetti were present.

Spaghetti made its way to the Dominican Republic with a wave of Italian immigrants in the late 19th century but became a staple in the national diet in the 1950s after dictator Rafael Trujillo established the first domestic pasta factory, Molinos Dominicanos, producing the Milano brand. 'At that time, spaghetti was cheaper than rice, plantains, beans, bacalao, herring, meat — everything,' explains Ivan Dominguez, director of Alianza Dominicana Cultural Center in Washington Heights. 'My whole neighborhood would go on Sundays, around 45 of us, in a two-story guagua (bus) from Santo Domingo to Boca Chica, each with our pot of spaghetti.' These gatherings and the dish itself became known as empaguetadas.

Dominicans from the Bronx and Washington Heights began visiting Los Siete Lagos in the 1970s, initially traveling on a Hudson River Day Liner from midtown Manhattan. Their numbers increased alongside their migration to New York, which started in 1961 following the assassination of Trujillo and subsequent political turmoil, and surged under Joaquín Balaguer, a U.S.-supported authoritarian who ruled for three nonconsecutive terms from 1966 to 1996. The Dominican Republic was undergoing a shift from rural to urban life, though urban wages were not always better than those in agriculture. Historian Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof noted in a 2009 New York Times Q&A that 'it was easy to imagine that moving to New York would lead to a life filled with modern comforts.'

The Migration Policy Institute reports that the New York Metropolitan area is now home to approximately 641,000 foreign-born Dominicans — about seven times the size of the next largest population center, Boston — along with many second-, third-, fourth-, and fifth-generation Dominican-Americans. Zorrilla’s parents hail from La Romana, DR, a picturesque coastal province in the island's southeast that is now a popular resort destination. They arrived in New York in 1982, opened an automotive carburetor repair shop, and started a family. Out of Zorrilla’s 13 maternal aunts and uncles, 11 moved to the U.S., mostly settling in the Dominican-rich neighborhood of Washington Heights, famously depicted in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony-winning and recently HBO Max-streaming production, In the Heights.

Despite evolving trends in the Dominican Republic, for the New York branch of the Zorrilla family, empaguetadas are an essential part of any beach family picnic, often bringing together 60 to 100 extended relatives. Regardless of connections, everyone is welcome. 'Look, those folks took our chairs without asking, and we don’t mind,' Zorrilla remarked, gesturing toward a group of about 30 strangers nearby. 'People just share.'

As Zorrilla awaited the arrival of more family members, the neighboring group began indulging in aluminum containers filled with spaghetti, mixed in a creamy sofrito and adorned with chunks of smoked pork and olives. 'We came here with eight cars today,' one member said. 'We’re really into spaghetti.' A few steps away, younger relatives from another large family were sharing a hookah while an older woman served plates of spaghetti on Styrofoam. Some had been in New York for 20 years, while others were new arrivals, having just been there for two months. One woman reminisced about a time in the DR when the entire pot of spaghetti fell into the sand, and they all tried to rescue the clean noodles before ultimately giving up. Nearby, a trio gathered around a smaller pot of spaghetti, reminiscing about how, back home, they would always bring spaghetti and bread on group outings to lakes, beaches, or rivers.

Though the specific ingredients in each pot varied, many shared a few common traits: the pasta was typically broken into small pieces and cooked until soft rather than al dente, then mixed with a tomato-based sauce made from garlic, onion, peppers, annatto (achiote), and butter. Some finished their sauce with a can of Carnation evaporated milk, while others added extras like olives, smoked pork chops, or chicken. Most families paired their spaghetti with pan sobao or pan de agua (soft, chewy loaves of bread similar in size to hoagie rolls), which they tried to keep warm, although lukewarm empaguetadas were still acceptable.

How did a pot of hot pasta become a staple beach dish for thousands of Dominicans? The phrase I kept hearing was, 'Es lo que más rinde' (it goes the furthest): spaghetti is the kind of meal that can be stretched to feed a crowd on a budget, and for Dominicans both at home and abroad, the beach is a place where crowds gather together.

Today, empaguetadas at Lake Welch hold as much significance as they did at Boca Chica. Lidia Marte, an Afro-Dominican cultural anthropologist at the University of Puerto Rico in Rio Piedras, emphasizes the importance of these cultural milestones. 'If we lack certain landmarks imbued with memories and new experiences, we fail to cultivate a sense of belonging and place. Food is always central,' she explains. 'It’s a way to assert our presence in public. By saying, ‘We are here, we are human, we have our dignity, and we cherish our traditions,’ people can share and reshape their stories through their culinary narratives, reinventing their identities in new surroundings.'

Zorrilla wholeheartedly agrees. In 2015, he established the organization Outdoor Promise to address the perception of American public parks as unwelcoming and unsafe for Black and Latinx communities. He encourages youth of color to become environmental stewards and 'outdoor leaders,' helping them feel as comfortable on hiking trails and in state parks as they do in their own neighborhoods. The program includes a summer trip to Los Siete Lagos for Dominican middle schoolers from Washington Heights, illustrating that experiencing nature is part of the Dominican experience in New York as well. Last time, Zorrilla brought a Greka percolator and dominoes to help them feel at home, along with burgers and hot dogs. 'But,' he admits, 'we should have brought empaguetadas. They would have loved that. Next time,'

Mike Diago is a social worker, writer, and chef residing in New York’s Hudson Valley.Clay Williams is a photographer based in Brooklyn.