Felina to Open in Ridgewood

Chef Anthony Bucco is leaving Restaurant Latour at Crystal Springs Resort to open a small restaurant in Ridgewood.

Felina is scheduled to open in mid-May. The restaurant has 70 seats, a pizza oven and a focused, ever-changing seasonal menu.

Bucco is eager to relinquish his executive position for the opportunity to stand again in front of the stove “I don’t need to look at P&L reports,” he says.

Felina offers the award-winning chef the opportunity to execute his own vision, a culmination of his years of culinary education, from Stage Left (New Brunswick) to Uproot (Warren) to The Ryland Inn (Whitehouse Station) to Barbuto (Manhattan) to Crystal Springs. The Felina menu will showcase a few of Bucco’s personal favorites, including gnocchi, the secrets of which he perfected at Barbuto, where the dish is famous, and bone marrow, which made a bold and seductive statement on the tables of Uproot when that restaurant opened in 2010. “I love bone marrow.”

Bucco is perhaps New Jersey’s most persistent cheerleader chef; in nearly every conversation he’ll tout a local ingredient or a local culinary talent. He often asks: When will the outside world recognize the talent and bounty of the Garden State? At Crystal Springs, directing the NJ Wine & Food Festival, he has gathered that talent together each year in celebration, attracting Jersey celebrities as well as national culinary figures, including Jose Andres and Thomas Keller. Bucco will remain at the helm for this year’s festival, which will mark its 10th anniversary with marquee chef Daniel Boulud, set for May 4–6.

Bucco fell in love with the culinary arts as a child. His grandfather came to the States from Sicily, and the large, hard-working extended family stayed close, thanks to bountiful dinners from his grandmother’s kitchen, which often featured ingredients from the Old Country—pistachios, olives, fennel, blood oranges.

Today, Bucco’s favored ingredients come from right outside the door. At Crystal Springs, in rural and forested Sussex County, with a backdrop of Kittatinny Mountain, it’s easy to broaden one’s for-aging expertise. Bucco forages for fiddlehead ferns, nettles, watercress. Even morels. Who knew? “Morels aren’t an easy thing to And in our state.” (And, at about $45 a pound, so much cheaper to And than to buy.)

Expect foraged ingredients on the Felina menu. Bucco advocates the work of foragers Sarah Berman and Corey Finck of The Armstrong Farm in Wantage, but he also likes the thrill of the search himself, wandering through the woods, searching for culinary treasure. (“Anyone who forages,” he says, “well, it’s a polite way of saying ‘trespassing.’”)

Bucco, preparing to leave behind the haute cuisine of Latour, also notes what won’t be featured at Felina.

“I dont know the next time I’il use truffles.”

FELINA
54 E. Ridgewood Ave.,
Ridgewood Scheduled to open in May