Feb 15

Fonda East Village Opens Next Week

By Florence Fabricant – February 13, 2012, 11:49 am

Roberto Santibañez is replicating Fonda, his three-year old Mexican restaurant in Park Slope, Brooklyn, in an East Village space.

Roberto Santibañez is replicating Fonda, his three-year old Mexican restaurant in Park Slope, Brooklyn, in an East Village space that is about 50 percent larger, with 60 seats and a menu of well-crafted, richly flavored regional dishes, including Yucatean shrimp, a Guajillo-style burger and chicken from the north with Chihuahua cheese. Crowd-pleasers like taquitos, flautas, braised pork in adobo sauce, and enchiladas suizas are also featured.

Mr. Santibañez said that the Manhattan restaurant, which is to open Feb. 21, will have more bar food and brunch dishes.  “In Brooklyn, this is a neighborhood place, a hangout, and I hope it will be the same in Manhattan,” he said. His commute, on the F train, will be an easy one, too, but he is also depending on cooks who have been with him for years.

Fonda Restaurant, 40 Avenue B (Third Street), Manhattan

“For Mexican food, your prep cooks are the most important,” he said. “They’re the ones who mix the moles and pipians and those are not last-minute sauces. They take time.”  He also plans to feature more mezcals at the bar. He serves only two in Brooklyn, but he thinks that his Manhattan clientele might be more interested in trying them

Fonda, 40 Avenue B (Third Street), (212) 677-4069.

New Fond Glory

Urban Daddy – February 17, 2012

Happy early birthday, George Washington.  Now there was a guy who loved spicy guacamole and hibiscus-infused margaritas.  Wait. It may have been wooden teeth and chopping down cherry trees.  Regardless, we’re sure if he were alive today, he’d want you to have these enchiladas.

A Large Concentration of Enchiladas on Avenue B

Meet Fonda, a Mexican restaurant on Avenue B that has everything you’d want out of a Mexican restaurant on Avenue B. Good queso. Authentic mole. And a big wood bar full of powerful tequila elixirs. And it opens Tuesday.  This place comes to the East Village courtesy of Park Slope (yes, the Yucatán Peninsula of West Brooklyn) and a Latin-blooded chef (the former Rosa Mexicano culinary director) who’s all about the three B’s. Braised meats. Bold salsas. And absolutely no mariachi Bands.

Not that you need an excuse to frequent an establishment that serves slow-stewed duck on soft, warm tortillas, but taking a date here would be a nice idea. See about reserving the lone booth in the house. It’s up front in the red-painted dining room and right next to the bar. Which is key, considering what we’re about to tell you.

These guys do margaritas right. Fresh fruits (guava, mango, pineapple), a touch of orange liqueur and a heavy slug of silver tequila.  Just the way G.W. liked it.

More links: Zagat, Gothamist, Homesite, Menu

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Sep 11

Pop-up phenomenon: Here this week, gone the next

By Sarah Gish, The Kansas City Star – Mon, Aug. 22, 2011

(..)

Port Fonda — a cross between a food truck and a mobile restaurant — has since become one of the city’s hottest foodie destinations.  On Friday and Saturday nights, Ryan parks it in a lot at 20th and Main streets and starts selling $3 tacos out the window. The chef also accepts reservations from customers who want to dine at the cozy table inside Port Fonda. A four-course meal for six people costs $250.

“We started joking when we opened, telling people this is the hardest table to get in Kansas City,” Ryan says.  Now that might be true: Reservations are booked through September, and Ryan won’t even accept reservations for October until Sept. 1.

Port Fonda embodies planned spontaneity: It’s parked at the same location every Friday and Saturday, but because it’s a food truck, eating there feels spur-of-the-moment.

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Port Fonda Food Truck

Written By: Around the Block – June 05, 2011

Wow. What a treat. I stopped by the Port Fonda food truck last Saturday afternoon to sample chef/owner Patrick Ryan’s Mexican fare, cooked to order at the truck’s stove.  I had been reading for months about Ryan’s project, a retrofitted airstream trailer. And this is not any old trailer. The interior is wrapped with gorgeous wood and has a chef’s table to match (more on that below.)

The truck is only open on weekend nights, with the exception of Saturday afternoons when you can usually find Port Fonda in the Rieger Hotel Exchange and Grill parking lot for about a 14 hour stretch. During the day the menu is limited to a few items, but when evening comes another handful of offerings take shape in the kitchen, ranging from tacos to tortas (Mexican sandwiches.) With our ever-increasing reliance on social media, the best way to discover where the truck will be parked and what will be on the menu is to follow Port Fonda on Facebook or Twitter.

I had the great fortune of going to Port Fonda on a day when they were serving chilaquiles– tortillas layered with a tomatillo/habanero sauce and chorizo verde, and topped with a fried egg.  I’m a big fan of Frontera Grill in Chicago, and when I heard Ryan used to work there, I knew this was going to be good. Even with high expectations, it blew me away. I haven’t been this excited about a dish since I first had a pizza at Pizza Bella and dreamt about it that night.

Ryan nailed the salsa. It sang with the roasted flavor of the chiles and had a marvelous kick to it. The tortillas had been softened by the sauce but weren’t soggy, as tends to happen if the dish is allowed to cook too long. And the egg was perfectly cooked, its runny yolk melding with the other ingredients to complete the happiness in my mouth.  The pozole was also authentically prepared. Red chile base, chunks of hominy, topped with radish and lime. A hearty and warm soup for a chilly, dreary day.

I wanted to try a taco and the only one they were serving that day had a tripe filling. For those unfamiliar with tripe, it’s part of a cow’s or pig’s stomach and is the main ingredient in a traditional Mexican soup called Menudo. Not a fan of Menudo, I was not overly enthused, but I ordered it anyway. It came in crisp strips and had I not been acutely aware of what I was eating, I may have mistaken it for meat. It was simply garnished, as are most street tacos, with pickled onions and just a touch of sauce. Not my favorite taco ever, but worth sampling.

Within the truck is a cozy table for 6, with a U-shaped banquette. The dining room (known as el comedor) is available by reservation only on weekend nights. Ryan is offering a 3 course meal centered around a pork shoulder and served with all the fixings to roll up in tortillas. I’m excited for that experience– based on my initial visit to Port Fonda, it should be a blast.

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Also see: Port Fonda, KC Magazine, Eldo Recommends, Yelp, Fonda History

More Updates: Patrick Ryan is ready to get rolling with Port Fonda in Westport (June 18, 2012)

Mexican restaurant Port Fonda now has a home in Westport (June 18, 2012)

Port Fonda Restaurant Set to Open Tuesday, June 26 (June 18, 2012)

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Jun 09

First Look: Ristorante Al Teatro

This new Pilsen spot is a feast for the eyes, even if the kitchen needs more rehearsal time

Metromix.com May 13, 2009 By M. Kathleen Pratt

Ristorante Al Teatro
Address: 1227 W. 18th St., Chicago, IL, 60608
Phone: 312-784-9100
Hours: 4-10 p.m. Sunday-Thursday; 4-11 p.m. Friday-Saturday

Week-old Pilsen spot Ristorante Al Teatro offers a full bill. There’s food, sure. But chef Maurizio Fonda‘s Italian fare is just part of the show. The other part, the lavish space in which it’s served, is a feast for the eyes.

Ristorante Al Teatro

In the Kitchen at Ristorante Al Teatro

The grand, 200-seat restaurant occupies the ground floor of Thalia Hall, the corner building that lords over the intersection of 18th and Allport Streets. The hall, named for the Greek muse of comedy and idyllic poetry, houses apartments on the upper levels, as well as retail spaces that are still undergoing renovations and an interior theater, the restaurant’s namesake, that’s next in line for restoration. Originally completed about the time of the World’s Columbian Exposition, the building earned city landmark designation nearly a century later, in 1989. But it was abandoned and in disrepair until late 2004, when restoration efforts began.

Though the building is late 19th Century, the ornate interior has been transformed into something almost Baroque. The restaurant has a larger-than-life feel, with four airy rooms spread out over two floors. There’s hardly an inch that’s not gilded, covered in some sort of polished stone or painted with trompe l’oeil curtains and arches. With its beautifully restored tin ceiling, fleur-de-lis patterned upholstery and other generally over-the-top embellishments (did we mention the downstairs waterfall?), there’s nowhere quite like it in the city.

Tucked away in the back of the ground-level dining room are two wood-fired pizza ovens where pizzaiolos toil under the watchful eye of a larger-than-life mural of Thalia herself. In any other restaurant, the brick ovens would be a focal point. Here, they’re just another piece of eye candy vying for your attention. But to overlook them would be a mistake.

Servers ferry the pizzas ($11.95-$14.95) from oven to table in seconds so they arrive still steaming, flame-kissed around the edges with a chewy crust and slightly wet center. As if taking a cue from the decor, the pizza menu covers a lot of ground, listing 20 options, from the house specialty pizza al galletto (roasted dark-meat chicken, sun-dried tomatoes, house-made pesto, goat cheese and mozzarella) to classics such as margherita, quattro fromaggi and pepperoni.

House-made pastas are a solid bet too, with options such as gnocchi al fromaggi ($13.95), soft, chewy pasta pillows in a rich five-cheese sauce, and rustic, mushroom-filled tortelloni alla boscaiola ($14.95).

Starting with our antipasto order-too-briny Mediterranean mussels in a savory white wine, herb and tomato broth-almost everything more nuanced than pizza or pasta went astray. Veal scaloppine ($21.95) was so overpowered by tart lemon juice that we could only manage a couple of bites before puckering up-and eventually giving up. Grigliata di calamari al limon ($14.95) suffered the opposite fate, though not to the same extreme. The grilled calamari had a divine smoky char but lacked the bright citrus notes needed for balance.

Ristorante Al Teatro owner Dominick Geraci also owns Caffe Gelato in Wicker Park, and the artisan gelati ($3.99 to go, $5.95 dine-in), available in two dozen flavors, are every bit as rich and silky as you’d expect. Other desserts, including wonderful house-made, chocolate-dipped cannoli ($7.95), are just as good. Most are available for carryout from the front gelato bar-which is perhaps your best option while Ristorante Al Teatro takes a little more time to rehearse its main act.

M. Kathleen Pratt is the Metromix dining producer. kpratt@tribune.com

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