The Scoop

Opening Penca: a new Mexican restaurant with historic roots

Patricia Schwabe

The paper-covered space downtown at 50 East Broadway has been in the process of emerging into a new restaurant for nearly a year, and soon it’s coming into the world with a name: Penca. “Penca is the rib of the agave,” explains the owner, Patricia Schwabe. “It represents the relationship with the land; a resilient spirit; it’s organic and true to its roots,” she adds, and it’s a name that reflects the place itself.

The address is a building from the 1920s, stripped to its foundation and crafted from the ground up with local and repurposed materials. Schwabe and her husband Ron are owners of Peach Properties, and many of the building materials for Penca have been salvaged and collected from other historic downtown buildings they’ve restored. “It creates a style that to me is personal and local, warm and intimate,” Patricia describes. It’s a style that she hopes will resonate into the drinks – from a cocktail menu being built by Luke Anable – to the food inspired by the fresh, vibrant cuisine found in central and southern Mexico and her own childhood in Mexico City. “I love traditional Mexican restaurants,” she says, “where the ingredients are fresh, the colors are vibrant, and where the service is exceptional.” Schwabe hopes that she can bring a small piece of that downtown, and wants Penca to be “a place where people become friends of the house.”

“The space is warm and minimal – I think romantic, in a way – and almost completely handmade top to bottom,” Anable writes, describing a bar from poured concrete, reclaimed wood and steel. It’s a look he calls honest and transparent, and he wants the drinks he serves there to match in their simplicity. “We think there is a time and a place for most things and we’d like to be able to provide a fitting drink for all occasions,” he notes, aiming for “a return to locality and contextual sensibility” with thoughtful drinks that pair gracefully with food or simply a memorable part of the day.

Schwabe scribbles down a sampling of dishes: huevos florentinos for breakfast, chile ancho glazed albondigas for lunch, short ribs for dinner. The menu will be sourced from local purveyors and farms, equipping chef David Valencia with fresh seasonal flavors to create what he calls “Progressive Mexican cuisine.” Complementing their origins, the courses will be served on dishes made locally at Santa Theresa Tile Works downtown.

Everything that is going into the emerging Penca is locally sourced and made or remade custom to the space, a process that explains its long development. “It takes time to see an idea for what it is,” explains Anable. “We’ve all had bad ideas and, for me, the only way to see them for what they are is to spend time with them, work with them, and see if they can hold up to the weight of experience and practice.” And for Schwabe, who has been involved with every step of the building, the answer is even simpler: creating a new business while simultaneously leasing properties and spending time with her children. Meanwhile the practiced hands of Sonya Sotinsky and Miguel Fuentevilla of FORS Architecture have been at work designing custom booths and chairs from reclaimed wood, most of it from the 1900s. They’ve stripped the restaurant down to its historic foundation.

“The space itself is very old and exposing the foundation, we hope, will remind people of the bigger picture downtown, the importance of preservation and history at a time of redevelopment and revitalization,” Luke Anable wrote to me about the space coming to life. “Everything we’re doing has one foot in the history of the area and one in a sense of what Tucson could and should be as a modern, progressive city.”

Falora Opens

Ari Shapiro is a busy man. Despite his successes with Sparkroot and Xoom, Shapiro dreamt of owning a “cozy, hole-in-a-beaut-wall authentic pizza joint.” When a space opened up in the Broadway Village, a historic Josias Joesler shopping center with tile floors and arched windows, Shapiro saw the perfect space. “I had to move my vision up a few years,” he joked. And now,  Falora is set to open March 2nd.

“We knew the space had tremendous potential, but after years of multiple remodels, it needed to be stripped to its core to reveal the rustic beauty, which we are letting speak for itself.” The “we” in this instance is Shapiro’s partnership with Repp Design, who worked with him to create a specific atmosphere at Sparkroot. “They have a wonderful ability to coalesce my vision into a fully-formed space,” he said. And this project’s goal can be described with three words: rustic, historic, and authentic. “I adore the historic architecture of Josias Joesler, who built the entire shopping center in 1939. We want people to feel like they’re eating in an authentic neighborhood pizzeria. Most of the seating is at one long community farm table. The lighting will be dim, music from a vintage stereo. We want folks to hear the crackling oven, get to know one another, truly enjoy the entire experience,” he elaborates. “I think a place can be bustling and comforting at the same time; my favorites in other cities always capture that essence.”

Shapiro’s vision is partly inspired by his trips to Italy, where a sense of community is paired with simple, inspired food. In a nod to the operation of many Italian restaurants, Falora will be a different kind of place in the morning, where homemade breads, jams, and locally roasted coffee from Caffe Luce will grace the table. In the evenings, it will be laden with some ingredients imported from Italy, and others farmed locally. Shapiro provided me with a list that sounds like geographical poetry: “San Marzano tomatoes which grow on volcanic plains near Mount Vesuvius; Mozzarella di Bufala from Italian water buffalo; and Caputo flour, a finely ground flour that has a lower gluten content” will all join local produce from Sleeping Frog Farms in Cochise for seasonal pizzas and salads. “We focus on balancing tradition with a sharply creative angle,” Shapiro wrote, adding that an influence from the “diverse phenom” of New York pizza will make its way onto the menu. After all, Shapiro says, “I am a native New Yorker, so I have a tremendous appreciation and love of pizza, growing up with giant slices from Famous Ray’s. New York truly took the Naples invention to the next level.” The drink selection will be similarly matched, with Italian wines and European beers (“obviously Peroni,” Shapiro added) alongside noteworthy Tucson brews. And for dessert: homemade panna cotta, a magical simmered cream custard traditional to northern Italy.

The name, Falora, is a lyrical invented word meant to sound a little Italian, a little like “flora”, and a little like “flour,” evoking an old world pizzeria atmosphere. The Stefano Ferrera wood fired oven certainly contributes to the character. Hand-built by a third generation maker in Naples, the brick oven is fueled entirely by wood – most use natural gas to supplement – and cranks up to 800 degrees. This oven is the centerpiece that will make Falora’s simple and authentic Napoli pizza possible. If you read Eat, Pray, Love and remember the scene where the author and her friend go crazy over their simple cheese pizzas in Naples, pizzas with crust that’s magically thin and chewy, topped with a sliding layer of buffalo mozzarella and a sprig of basil – if you remember their happy delirium, then you’ll be as expectant for Falora as I am.