Garces opening 3 restaurants at Tropicana in Atlantic City
The concepts are varied: Latin seafood, Japanese, and a bar.
Jose Garces will open two restaurants and a bar this spring at the Tropicana in Atlantic City, marking his return to the shore resort 2½ years after the shutdown of Revel Casino kicked him, other restaurateurs, and 3,000 workers to the curb.
Garces' main room will be a modern seafood restaurant called Olon Restaurante in the casino's former Fin. Olon - after a city in Ecuador, his family's homeland - will serve dinner nightly; a cevicheria (raw seafood bar) will be open for lunch.
He's also opening Okatshe, which will be set up in what is billed as a "Japanese street-scape setting," offering sushi, sake and noodle-bar food stalls, in the former Seaside Café. There will be a Japanese-theme candy store at the entrance.
The third is what his crew is calling an upbeat bar with live entertainment called La Cerveceria, whose menu will include seafood and sushi, as well as two dozen draft beers.
All are scheduled to open March 3, a representative said.
In his home base of Philadelphia, Garces is also planning his group's second Buena Onda taqueria, which is pegged to open in late spring or summertime at 1735 Chestnut St.
For two years, Garces had been riding high at Revel with Amada, Village Whiskey, Distrito Cantina, and a noodle bar called Yuboka when the casino closed. In 2015, Garces briefly ran the food service at T-Street before a management shakeup at the pier.
Also in Atlantic City star-chef news, Food Network/The Chew chef Michael Symon is expecting a spring opening of Angeline, a fine-dining Italian restaurant, at the Borgata.