Patrick Ryan is ready to get rolling with Port Fonda in Westport
Steam rising off a bowl of goat stew as it’s carried by a server through the dining room at 4141 Pennsylvania – this is what Patrick Ryan has seen whenever he has closed his eyes over the past 18 months.
The bearded, bespectacled chef feverishly worked the cramped kitchen inside Port Fonda, his modded Airstream trailer that started rolling in 2011. He came back to Kansas City to open a restaurant. First, he needed to make sure that Kansas City was hungry for his take on nuevo-Latino cuisine. The line that stretched each weekend from the gleaming mobile kitchen’s order window, in the parking lot of the Rieger Hotel Grill & Exchange, answered that question.
“The truck was a real jumping-off point, personally and professionally,” Ryan says. “It was when the dream of opening and owning a restaurant seemed really far off. But I still had all these cool ideas between my own ears I wanted to see come to fruition.”
