Updated 3:30 p.m. Dec. 17: It’s a post-Christmas miracle: Chef Jose Mendin’s first Broward restaurant Rivertail, a seafood house and oyster bar, will open to the public on Thursday, Dec. 26. Mendín’s Food Comma Hospitality Group, also partners on the the Wharf Fort Lauderdale next door, announced on Tuesday that the restaurant will start taking reservations on Dec. 26. Call 954-306-2665.
Rivertail will be open at 4 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday to start, and feature dishes such as Bay Scallops Escagot with shiso-garlic butter and sea salt; Mof-Gumbo with plantains, Creole seafood stew and dark roux; and Chilli Crab with wok-tossed crab claws, red curry, chiles and herbs. Happy hour specials, offered from 4 to 7 p.m., will include $1 oysters, $2 peel-and-eat shrimp and $3 medium stone crab claws.
James Beard-nominated Miami chef Jose Mendin, famed for his Puerto Rican-flavored Pubbelly eateries, is shipping up to Broward with his first downtown Fort Lauderdale seafood restaurant, Rivertail.
Rivertail, described by Mendin as an “oyster bar and fish house,” is scheduled to debut in late October at 315 S. Andrews Ave., in the space formerly occupied by St. Patty’s Day mainstay Briny Riverfront Pub. Next door, pop-up dining-entertainment hub The Wharf Fort Lauderdale will take shape at 40 E. Las Olas Blvd, along the busy stretch of riverfront between Esplanade Park and Huizenga Plaza.
Both projects constitute a Miami invasion via Fort Lauderdale’s New River. Mendin, for the uninitiated, is one of Miami’s hottest properties, with his growing Food Comma Hospitality Group empire of eateries (Pubbelly, Habitat, the recent uber-Puerto Rican restaurant La Placita) earning the chef several James Beard Foundation nominations. (Mendin, 40, was also named one of People Magazine’s “Sexiest Chefs in America” in 2017.)