A brand-new tapas and red wine dining establishment from among Fort Worth’s best-known chefs is opening this fall: Called La Coqueta, it’ll be the very first long-term brick-and-mortar dining establishment from Juan Rodriguez and his better half Paige, who together run a popular pop-up supper club on the city’s north side called Magdalena’s.
La Coqueta will likewise live on the north side, at 1216 N. Main St., in a little, enduring structure that a lot of just recently housed the La Arboleda bar.
“The north side has actually been great to us, so we certainly wished to open our very first genuine brick-and-mortar there,” Juan Rodriguez states.
“La Coqueta” implies “somebody who is flirty,” Rodriguez states.
“In regards to the dining establishment, the name implies welcoming, enjoyable, even womanly, you might state,” he states.
The menu will include 12-14 tapas, or little meals, created to share.
” I like to prepare Spanish and Mexican food, and the menu will show that,” he states. “As we enter into the groove of the dining establishment, we’ll include more meals.”
His signature meal will be paella, a rice meal made with meat and veggies that come from the rice-growing locations on Spain’s Mediterranean coast. Paella is made in unique pans that are shallow with sloped sides, which assists the rice cook equally. Rodriguez’s performance will include seasonal active ingredients.
Other meals will consist of croquettes made with jamón serrano and manchego cheese; charcuterie boards; tostados topped with fresh hamachi and tuna; and tortillitas de camarones – little, flat shrimp fritters that come from the province of Cadiz in Andalusia,Spain
For beverages, there will be a menu of Spanish and Latin- influenced mixed drinks, such as a frozen horchata colada and the dining establishment’s take on a mezcal sour. There will likewise be a brief however differed red wine list comprised of little production red wines from all over the world, from Spain and Italy to California andMexico
Like the food menu, the red wine menu will turn, Rodriguez states. There will likewise be a number of coffee beverages, from cortados and espressos to coffee-infused mixed drinks.
The 2,000-square-foot structure, which has actually been a bar, café and automobile lot given that it was set up in 1955, will house about 25 visitors. A to-be-built outside patio location will house about another 25 individuals.
Rodriguez credits his grandma with presenting him to cooking. As a kid, the Chicago native typically visited his grandma in Monterrey, Mexico, where she taught him how to prepare over open flames– a strategy he still utilizes today with his paella.
Later, he transferred to Dallas, where he got a partner’s degree in cooking arts from the Art Institute ofDallas He invested the next a number of years operating in cooking areas far and wide, consisting of the now-closed New York place of Tim Love’sLonesome Dove Western Bistro
In Fort Worth, he went far for himself as executive chef of Reata, among the city’s most popular dining establishments. After 8 years, he left Reata in 2015 to begin Magdelena’s pop-up dinner club.
Hopes were high that La Coqueta was going to open in 2022, however structure licenses and materials have actually been sluggish moving, triggering hold-ups. Now the dining establishment is on the ideal track.
” I ‘d like to open in the spring, however since of the supply concerns, more than likely it’ll be summertime or fall,” he states. “We have actually begun demo-ing now, so that’s an excellent indication we’re on track to open quickly.”
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