Bright colors, good vibes and happiness are what Mamajuana Café is looking to provide to customers as it opened its first Connecticut location featuring Latino cuisine.
The restaurant, located at 950 Wolcott St. in Waterbury, had its a soft opening on Aug. 23 and will celebrate its grand opening sometime next month.
The Waterbury location is the 10th Mamajuana Café, that includes four locations in New York, three in New Jersey and two in Florida. The first location opened in 2006 in Inwood, New York.
Waterbury resident Claudio Perez owns the Connecticut location. The 50-year-old is of Dominican descent and grew up in Brooklyn, New York before moving to Waterbury 13 years ago. Mamajuana Café is the first restaurant he has owned.
Another Waterbury resident, Jhonathan Cruz, is the Mamajuana Café manager. He is of Colombian descent.
“Our food is a Latin fusion with many kinds of foods including, pastas, steaks and sushi,” Perez said. “We have Dominican food and Latin food including food from Europe.”
Perez developed a love for preparing food at a young age cooking for friends and family. He also has a background in the meat and fish industry and understands the quality of products the restaurant’s chef uses and chooses it himself.
Perez said the food is the main attraction, and customers that would normally get similar food in New York have been stopping in his restaurant. He added that it’s been a diverse group of customers that have come in and has attracted younger customers to senior citizens. Perez said some customers have already stopped five times in the first week.
Sauces are made from scratch with recipes from the Dominican Republic to Colombia and feature flavors from Caribbean Hispanic and South American culinary traditions.
Perez said two of its signature dishes are mofongo and yucafongo. Mofongo is plantain pressed with garlic and fresh herbs, choice of chicken, shrimp and lobster, churrasco or vegetable. Mofongo and yucafongo dishes both range between $32-$38 a meal.
Also on the soft opening menu is Puerquito MMJ ($32), a Caribbean-style slow cooked roasted pork in house-made marinade, topped with fried leeks, a side of chimichurri sauce and demi-glaze accompanied by rice and pigeon peas and sweet plantains.
There is also penne vodka ($18) with chicken ($20) or shrimp ($24); pargo relleno ($36), which is a crispy whole Mediterranean red snapper filled with seafood, white rice and creole sauce; seafood casserole ($35) featuring shrimp, clams, mussels, scallops, lobster, cooked in a salsa criolla with fine herbs; oxtail fettuccine ($32), which is deboned oxtail pieces mixed in fettuccine, spinach and burrata topped with handmade roast; half chicken ($21), an organic roasted half chicken served with roasted potatoes; and stuffed salmon ($30), which is crabmeat-stuffed salmon in a dill, garlic and heavy cream sauce accompanied with butterfly pea rice and assorted vegetables.
Other entree options are chillo boca chica ($30), fresh fried red snapper, tostones and green salad; rabo encendido ($26), a Dominican oxtail stew with rice and pigeon peas and crispy sweet plantains; and pollo criollo ($24), a chicken breast, sweet plantains, white rice, beans, creole sauce.
During the soft opening, the Mamajuana Café menu features only a portion of what the menu will be during the grand opening.
There is a wide array of Dominican Republic-themed house cocktails on the drink menu. Mamajuana is a Dominican Republic-born drink that is rum-based island drink. The flavor is drawn from a recipe of exotic roots, herbs and spices from the Dominican Republic.
“It’s a natural tropical drink from sugar cane,” Perez said. “Rum is the main alcohol, and we use a different kind of tree root.”
There is a large dining room as well as lounge area to drink cocktails and a bar area as well. Many of the decorations are nature- and floral-based and jungle-related. There is also a large screen showing various scenes of the Dominican Republic. The architecture is based on the colonial city of the Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
“The concept of the restaurant is a happy life,” Cruz said. “Happiness and good vibes, that’s the most important thing. Concept of our restaurant is to make people happy. It’s about service, environment and good vibes.”
The restaurant currently seats 200 patrons and, when the patio opens next year, it will seat a maximum of 302.
During the soft opening, the restaurant is open from 3 p.m. to midnight.
“The soft opening has been really good,” Perez said. “The weekends have been really busy. And eventually we will have entertainment with live music or an artist playing an instrument or a local DJ. When we have our full opening, and on days when the restaurant is full, we will bring in popular bands within the Latino community.”
In a few weeks, the restaurant plans to open early on Saturdays and Sundays for a brunch menu.
The hours after the grand opening will be 11:30 a.m. to midnight Sundays through Thursdays and 11:30 a.m. to 4 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.
Perez said he hopes to expand throughout the state but feels the restaurant fills a void in Waterbury.
“I think Waterbury needs a place like this and that’s one of the reasons why we chose this location,” Perez said. “We think people are going to like what we offer here with the Mamajuana-style ambiance.”
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