El Portón Café opens midtown takeout shop next week

Restaurateur Jose Garcia has a motto: “I always tell people, ‘Think big.’  If you can’t think big, why think at all?”

That was his response to my question about his new satellite restaurant, El Portón Café, which is scheduled to open next Tuesday, October 6, at 240 East Linwood. “Isn’t this a cursed location?” I asked.

“You have to think big,” Garcia said.

It’s hard to think big inside a tiny storefront dwarfed by the monolithic Costco across the street. This offbeat location has been occupied by a series of failed venues, most recently Poco’s. (Other past tenants include the Orange Box, Gyro House, King Shark and Fire Burger.)

“This is a tryout for me,” Garcia said. “I only signed a one-year lease. I’d like to open more of these casual restaurants, but this is my first test.”

It’s a big test.

Garcia, a native of Maracaibo, Venezuela, has a long restaurant history in Kansas City. His lengthy résumé includes gigs such as oyster shucker at the old downtown Lobster Pot and chef at the restaurant formerly known as Grille on Broadway. He took a gamble in 2002 and opened a 13-stool diner in Kansas City, Kansas, called Cafe Venezuela. Eight years later, he moved on to a bigger, more elaborate restaurant in Overland Park, El Portón Café, and hit something of a culinary jackpot. It’s an unassuming Latin American bistro, serving dishes from Peru, Guatemala, Chile, Venezuela, Cuba and Puerto Rico, but it’s popular and very, very good. 

The version across the state line won’t carry the full menu of its suburban counterpart, but the Linwood El Portón seems built to satisfy Garcia’s fans. 

“This will be a mostly takeout restaurant,” Garcia told me Monday. “We’ll mostly be serving Venezuelan dishes like fried empanadas, arepas, plantains and pabellon, the combination of carne mechada, arroz blanco, and caraotas negras. It’s one of the most popular and traditional dishes of Venezuela.”

There will be just three table in the restaurant and a narrow counter with five stools. The hours are built for lunch and something to carry home after work: 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Monday through Saturday. In addition to the traditional chicha beverage — the Venezuelan version of soothing horchata — this El Portón Café will offer American soft drinks and bottled water.

Another specialty of this restaurant, Garcia said, are freshly made Cubano sandwiches: “I’m installing a stone oven so we can bake our own Cuban bread.” 

There’s that thinking big again.