Celebrity chef to open Johnson Avenue eatery

Correction Appended

The executive chef of Oregano Bar & Bistro, a French-Latin restaurant opening on Johnson Avenue this fall, is a busy man.

As his knife oscillated in quick mechanical strokes along a cutting board in the kitchen of his Inwood Dominican mainstay, Mamajuana Café, on July 7, Riverdalian Chef Ricardo Cardona rarely looked down. Most of the time, he was watching the rest of the kitchen, his only pauses to bark directions at line cooks.

“Parilla! The grill!” Mr. Cardona yelled, before grabbing a yellow pepper off a griddle and throwing it on the correct cooking surface.

Mr. Cardona is executive chef at six restaurants in New York City, and  owns a catering company. But he is going to be much busier come autumn. 

His new reality show, Mission Menu, is set to premier on TLC in October and his 3522 Johnson Ave. restaurant should be opening around the same time.

Mr. Cardona has spent much of the past few weeks globetrotting for his show, in which he and two other chefs research the ethnic cuisine of failing eateries and then create menus in the hopes of saving the restaurants. 

He has lived near West 256th Street and Broadway for 18 years. His restaurant, he said, is going to bring a lower Manhattan ambiance to the former Josepina restaurant location.

“Riverdale is a burgeoning area, but it’s never really had a downtown culinary feel,” Mr. Cardona said. “There hasn’t been a serious restaurant in Riverdale since I’ve been there, so I think a French bistro with a pinch of Latin is going to be popular.”

He and his business partner, Erick Caceres, feel they are ahead of the curve in a neighborhood more known for pastrami and cheesecake than tasting menus and culinary foam.

“I think that Riverdale is on the cusp of becoming a destination, especially Johnson Ave. Hopefully we’ll be the first of some interesting things coming to that strip,” Mr. Caceres, who was raised in Washington Heights and went to John F. Kennedy High School in Kingsbridge, said. “There are young professionals, doctors, teachers, people who are going to demand to have something going on in the neighborhood.”