Bolo updates viejo classics with bold Puerto Rican energy

The joyful Latinx energy is infectious at this beautiful restaurant and rum bar near Rittenhouse Square, an inspired modern homage to the flavors of chef-partner Yun Fuentes’ Puerto Rican upbringing.

Chef and co-owner Yun Fuentes makes lobster mofongo at Bolo in Philadelphia. Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer

The staccato call of a piano echoes through the palm-fringed skylight dining room at Bolo. “Manteca!” cries a member of the 1961 Alegre All Stars, and a rolling wave of pulsing congas, rasping guiros, and horns pipe in.

I cannot resist the syncopated spell of this Cubop classic soundtrack of Latin jazz, swiping my malanga chip with a little extra swagger through the sweet fufu of mashed ripe plantains scattered with a confetti of citrus fruit mojo that marks a festive start to a Bolo meal. I can hardly blame our server, who seemed to shimmy as he delivered his tableside spiel, lightly practicing salsa steps while previewing details of the ceviches, pincho skewers, and cuchifritos to come.

The joyful Latinx energy here is infectious, from the colorful Puerto Rican art that brightens both floors of this beautiful bi-level newcomer near Rittenhouse Square, to the 60-bottle rum bar with windows that flip up onto the Sansom Street sidewalk.

The downstairs bar at Bolo in Center City. Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer

The Coco Bolo features Old Grand Dad Bonded, coco rico soda, lime, and shredded young coconut. Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer

“I really missed my time at Alma de Cuba, so let’s do a Latin thing.”

That’s what chef and co-owner Yun Fuentes remembers telling Tommy Joyner and Jamie Lokoff, the MilkBoy partners who teamed up with him here to reimagine this space previously occupied by Il Pittore, Noble American Cookery, and Cibucán as an evocative island of Caribbean nostalgia recast for Philly 2023.

Unlike long-gone Cibucán, ¡Pasión!, or Alma de Cuba, where the San Juan-born Fuentes was second-in-command to “Nuevo Latino” pioneer Douglas Rodriguez, Bolo’s menu is less about inventive multicultural combinations than it is updating viejo classics. With fresh techniques, prime ingredients, and local sourcing, he captures a personalized view of modern “PhilaRican” cooking as the natural product of the island’s diaspora.

Bacalaitos salt cod fritters are turned into tostada-shaped discs that dangle from a skewer. Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer

“We hold our traditions and heritage close and take them everywhere we go as Latinos,” Fuentes says. “I can’t put your feet in the sand here. But we can move our culture forward by making new things within the vantage point of where we’re at. … I want my culture to be intertwined with the fabric of this city.”

Bacalaitos salt cod fritters are turned into tostada-shaped discs that dangle from a skewer above a crock of Maryland blue crab salad dusted with horseradish. The usual gouda inside sorullitos corn fritters is replaced with oozy Seven Sisters from Chester County’s Doe Run. And the Rittenhouse Square farmers market is what inspired Fuentes’ novel take on a lighter sancocho. Using a whole red snapper instead of the usual stewed meats as a centerpiece, the butterflied fish glazed in ají dulce aioli levitates atop thick chunks of summer zucchini — or whatever vegetable is in season — and a saucy puree of root vegetables and beef consommé punched up with the garlic and culantro boost of recaito, one of several sofrito variations Bolo uses.

The whole red snapper glazed in ají dulce aioli levitates atop thick chunks of summer zucchini — or whatever vegetable is in season — and a saucy puree of root vegetables and beef consommé. Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer

An entire Maine lobster is the highlight of Fuentes’ luxe East Coast rendition of mofongo, tucking luscious butter-poached pieces of the crustacean into a pilón of lard-mashed plantains with crunchy chicharrones, wild oregano, and creamy coconut-garlic sauce: “It represents our culture, our history, and what our grandmas were serving at the table. But I wanted to put mofongo on a pedestal because it deserves to be there.”

I’m encouraged that Fuentes improved that dish between visits, reconceiving its presentation to de-emphasize the acidic mojo isleño that overpowered the earlier version. I’m due to retry Bolo’s vaca frita, whose pickled beef shreds I found overly chewy at my first meal. But there are so many other irresistible dishes, from the saffron bomba rice of soupy asopao piled high with enormous head-on shrimp to the deeply savory bistec Palomilla. The notably tender butterflied hanger steak is served with rum-cooked cippolini onions glazed in vinegar and adobo alongside crispy yuca fries.

The ceviche trio featuring salmon tiradito, Ecuadoran shrimp, and red snapper Nikkei. Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer

The nearly 40-item savory menu is huge, but has clearly “been brewing for a long time” in Fuentes’ mind as the 45-year-old took a long detour through other cuisines, working a circuit of Garces restaurants (Amada, JG Domestic, Village Whiskey, and Tinto, where he was chef de cuisine) to DK Sushi, Double Knot, and the French-infused American fare of the Wayward. At Bolo, he’s able to make larger cultural statements — showcasing the complex impact of colonialism on Latinx-Caribbean cooking that wove Spanish, African, Asian, and Indigenous influences into distinctive and delicious dishes like mofongo — while offering long-overdue restaurant representation in Center City West for an important Philadelphia community that is the second-largest Boricua population outside of Puerto Rico (behind New York).

Fuentes captures that spirit through a collage of childhood memories and intimate family tributes. We see glimpses through multiple paintings by a childhood pal, Juan Pablo Viczaino, who portrayed both a “Caribbean Madonna” (the model is a mutual high school friend named Sasha), as well as a picture of Fuentes celebrating a birthday with his grandfather, Juan “Bolo” Fuentes, the chef, patriarch, and restaurant’s namesake.

Chef Yun Fuentes makes lobster mofongo at Bolo. Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer

Lobster mofongo at Bolo. Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer

Grandpa Bolo’s legendary feast of snacks and sangria, delivered to ladies waiting for their appointments at the beauty salon his grandmother ran out of their home, inspired the broad selection of small-plate nibbles that make up much of this menu. I’m partial to many of the crispy bites, like the empanadillas stuffed with cuminy lamb picadillo. The various ceviches are a solid homage to Fuentes’ days working for Rodriguez (also at Patria in New York) — but unsurprising. I was more taken by the range of dynamic flavors and textures Bolo threads onto pincho skewers, from a spicy hunk of chorizo wrapped inside a giant shrimp, to sweet Jersey scallops, tender lamb with sun-dried tomato escabeche, paprika-bronzed tentacles of crispy octo, garlicky soft eggplant, and toothy rounds of heart of palm. Pork belly cubes rendered tender from a braise in Malta India and citrus get seared on the plancha and served with ajílimójili, the Puerto Rican counterpart to chimichurri that sounds (and tastes) like an herbal magic spell.

Paintings and photographs decorate the dining room at Bolo. Chef Juan “Bolo” Fuentes, the grandfather of chef-owner Yun Fuentes and namesake for the restaurant, is pictured at center. Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer

Pinchos at Bolo. Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer

Family references are everywhere, from the three-inch-high pouf of frothy egg white hovering atop the Beehive cocktail that’s a ginger-infused wink to his abuela’s hair salon, to the gnocchi-like corn and coconut milk dumplings called guanimes, a specialty of his great-grandmother Lula, that turns an easily overlooked side of hen of the woods mushrooms into a must-order dish. The guanimes are poached in a “Boricua dashi” of root vegetable broth steeped with banana leaves.

There’s even a story behind Bolo’s best dessert, a warm upside coconut cake topped with caramelized pineapple and vanilla ice cream. Its origin is in a failed birthday cake commissioned by Fuentes’ dad years ago from a South Jersey bakery — which misunderstood the order and baked a whole pineapple inside — that has since become a family legend.

“Every year since,” Fuentes says with a chuckle, “we eat coconut cake with pineapple inside for my son’s birthday.”

No wonder every night at Bolo feels like a celebration. Even the Fuentes family’s inside jokes are delicious.

The exterior of Bolo at 2025 Sansom St. in Center City. Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer

Website Link: https://www.inquirer.com/food/craig-laban/bolo-puerto-rican-restaurant-review-philadelphia-laban-20230912.html#loaded