Port Fonda’s second location will open this summer in Lawrence

Patrick Ryan, the chef and owner of the popular two-year-old Port Fonda in Westport, says he has signed the lease for a space at 900 New Hampshire in Lawrence. Ryan will be working with architect Matthew Hufft of Hufft Projects to create the interior of the restaurant that will not look like the original Port Fonda at 4141 Pennsylvania and will be “only slightly larger,” Ryan says.

Ryan says after Westport’s Port Fonda hit the two-year mark last summer, he was ready to tackle a new project.

“We had considered opening a restaurant, with a completely different concept, in the new Woodside development,” Ryan says, “but there were a lot of construction delays that kept pushing that project back, so we went back to the drawing board.

“We looked at other neighborhoods, but Brookside is too close to Westport and the River Market hasn’t really happened yet,” Ryan says. “But I realized that things are happening in Lawrence, with the development of the Ninth Street corridor. The energy there seemed right.”

Ryan’s wife, artist Taylor Triano, is a graduate of the University of Kansas and the couple have recently been spending more time in Lawrence. The new restaurant will be in a corner space of a new building adjacent to the new Marriott Towneplace Suites and patrons will enter the new Port Fonda through its own entrance and by entering the hotel. The tentative design of the dining room will feature a different configuration of the bar and an exhibition kitchen. The Lawrence venue will also have a small patio.

Ryan won’t be serving the exact same menu in Lawrence that he offers in Westport — although both restaurants will have Saturday and Sunday brunch — because he “wants to change the Lawrence menu up a bit, doing a lot more of the stuff that really works well in Westport and none of the dishes that don’t.”

The general manager of Port Fonda in Westport, Jamie Davila, will oversee operations in Lawrence and Ryan says other staff members may move to that location too. “We’re looking for a small place for Taylor and I to rent in Lawrence, so we’ll have a place to stay while we open the restaurant.”

Ryan says the build out will begin in April. “We’ve planned in all the possible delays and obstacles,” Ryan says, “and getting past a few hiccups, we think we’ll be open in mid-July.”