Groton ― After 35 years, Paul’s Pasta, the popular restaurant on Thames Street, is under new ownership.

Paul and Dorothy Fidrych, the couple whose retail pasta shop morphed into an award-winning dining destination, announced Friday they’ve sold the restaurant to the Tymark Restaurant Group of Westerly.

The Tymark Group takes the reins of Paul’s Pasta on Friday.

“It’s crazy to think back on all those years ago and now we’re leaving,” Paul Fidrych said Friday morning. “The last few days, our emotions have been all over the spectrum. But Tyler Carlson and Mark Lacz, owners and founders of Tymark, are local and very family oriented, and it’s time for us to pass the baton to young people who are excited to carry on the Paul’s Pasta legacy.”

Tymark owns six restaurants and a catering operation, including Vetrano’s, Vetrano’s Wood-Fired and Casa Della Luce in Westerly and The Fisherman in Groton Long Point.

“Mark and I are so excited for this opportunity,” Tyler Carlson said. “The Fidrychs are sweet people and they built an institution by hand. There’s high expectations on our team and a lot of responsibility and it fits in well to what we already do and are prepared for.”

Fidrych said he and his wife, who were married in 1984, started thinking about selling the restaurant as far back as 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Though Paul’s Pasta mostly stayed open as a take-out facility during the pandemic and then rebounded with “consistent and big crowds,” Fidrych said, “We wanted to get out while we were still young enough to travel and do other things, while my hips and knees and back still work.”

The Fidrychs plan to stay local but have sons they plan on visiting in Maine and Asheville, N.C. They’d also like to see Portugal, Canada and Italy.

Running a restaurant, we’ve only ever had time for quick, 48-hour getaways to Boston or Saratoga or New York,“ Fidrych said. ”We’re pretty excited about the possibilities.“

When they became serious about selling, the Fidrychs first searched for an online restaurant broker but weren’t satisfied with what they found, Fidrych said.

“Then we quietly put our ears to the ground to see what was going on. We kept hearing great things about Mark and Tyler and the Tymark Group. They’d just taken on The Fisherman,” Fidrych said. “We reached out and they were interested.”

“We were flattered that they’d heard of our group and dined in our restaurants,” Carlson said. “We had easy conversations from the word go. We have shockingly similar values and there was just an immediate connection. I think (the Fidrychs) know that Mark and I are part of a team of incredible professionals and we will work very hard to honor this legacy.”

Fidrych, who graduated from the Culinary Institute of America, and Dorothy, a Johnson & Wales alumna, started out working in restaurants in the Hartford and Westbrook areas. They were attracted by the small business/family aspect of diners and, after trying handmade pasta for the first time at Pasta Unlimited in Deep River, thought a similar idea might work by the shore.

Driving around looking for locations, they spotted a “For Rent” sign in front of a building overlooking the Thames River — and that’s been the Paul’s Pasta location since.

Over time, the site-crafted pasta, a winning menu of simple but tasty Italian fare and a congenial and relaxed atmosphere earned several “Best Of” awards from the media as well as legions of followers from neighborhood folks, families across the region and Navy and Coast Guard personnel.

Fidrych is also proud that so many young people in the region worked through summers and part time at Paul’s Pasta — some of them staying on for years.

“We put a lot of kids through college,” he said. “We used to have an annual employee party on fireworks night at Sailfest. We’d have a karaoke machine. One year, I sang Johnny Cash’s ‘I’ve Been Everywhere’ but I changed the lyrics to ‘I hired everyone.’”

Terms of the sale were not disclosed.

r.koster@theday.com