Port Fonda’s Lawrence location a few weeks from opening

Patrick Ryan, the chef-owner of Westport’s popular Port Fonda, is headed back to college this fall. But not as a student.

Ryan, a graduate of Western State College (now Western State Colorado University) and the Western Culinary Institute (now Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts) in Oregon, is readying a second location of his three-year-old restaurant in downtown Lawrence, a few minutes from the University of Kansas. Slated to open by early October, the corner space at 900 New Hampshire is connected to the TownePlace Suites by Marriott.

When I stopped by last week, the still-unfinished dining room — designed by Kansas City’s Hufft Projects — looked vastly bigger than the Westport space. Ryan told me that his new restaurant is indeed 1,700 square feet larger than the original, but it will seat only 45 more people. (The one in Westport tops out at 100.) The bar was nearly completed, and the sleek Wood Stone oven had been installed in the exhibition kitchen. Ryan and his general manager, Jamie Davila, were in the process of hiring the new staff. 

The Westport restaurant’s dining room is notoriously noisy, which many of Ryan’s regulars say they love, but the Lawrence space will be a little gentler. “There are a lot of hard surfaces in here,” Ryan said, looking around the long, L-shaped room, “but the 20-foot ceilings in the dining room have been sprayed with a thick layer of a noise-absorbing material called Sonofoam. We can tell it’s working already. There’s no echo in the room.

“The Lawrence venue will not look like the one in Westport,” Ryan added. “The concrete floor will be stained a coppery shade, the lighting fixtures will be amber — made by Heath Ceramics in Sausalito, California — and the tile work will be in shades of dulce de leche. This is not a duplicate of Port Fonda but very much its own Port Fonda.”

All the front windows of the restaurant will feature line drawings by KC tattoo artist Mikey Wheeler (including a likeness of KU basketball legend James Naismith), and the private Reserva room will seat as many as 48 for private parties. There will also be, sometime next year, a patio.

The Port Fonda on this rapidly changing stretch of New Hampshire is only one block off Lawrence’s busiest restaurant boulevard, and it offers an advantage to diners commuting from KC — the largest free public-parking garage in the city is right across the street.

Three servers from the original restaurant will train the new staff, and bartender Nate Burian is moving full time to the new venture. Ryan himself is making himself available to oversee catering and special events for a penthouse event space atop the adjoining hotel.

Since Ryan announced his Lawrence plan in January, he has been asked a particular question over and over: Why not Leawood?

“I get that a lot,” Ryan told me. “We considered a lot of different neighborhoods when I felt the timing was right for a second location. Some were too close to the original restaurant and canceled each other out. Some locations were charging ridiculous rents.”

Davilo jumped in: “The idea of Lawrence kept coming up and coming up in conversations. The restaurant scene in Lawrence is really growing. And it’s outgrowing Massachusetts Street.”

“It was absolutely the right decision,” Ryan said. “I don’t think another Port Fonda would work anywhere in Kansas City right now. Lawrence is absolutely right.”