Chef Michael Gulotta and his partners, best known for their modern Vietnamese restaurant , have a new project in the works for the CBD.
Their next restaurant, called Maypop, is slated to open by the end of the year in apartment building. It will take over the ground floor space at O'Keefe Avenue and Lafayette Street that was previously home to the short-lived restaurant Ursa Major.
While the MoPho menu is anchored by pho and spring rolls, it has always served more composed and original specials, melding Southeast Asian staples with modern American culinary style. Maypop will forego the pho and instead follow the path set by MoPhoโs specials.
"MoPho distilled," is one way Gulotta described the new concept, noting that the overall approach will be a notch more refined than the anytime-casual MoPho.
โWe love that MoPho has become this neighborhood joint in Mid-City, but we also want to bring what we do downtown and expand it with other dishes,โ he said.
At MoPho, chef Michael Gulotta built a following on rice noodles, aromatic broth and origina…
For instance, house-made noodles will be a key element on the Maypop menu, which is still under development.
Gulotta and crew have expanded their range in the noodle department since opening , their Italian kitchen inside the Mid-City lounge Treo. They make many styles ofย noodles here, using different grains for different textures and flavors. In this way, the Maypop menu will fold in elements of both Tana and MoPho.
The Paramount building, part of the larger South Market District development, is now home to a row of casual eateries, including the Company Burger, Part & Parcel deli, Blaze Pizza, the Vietnamese cafรฉ Magasin Kitchen and the bakery/cafรฉ Willa Jean.
As the South Market District continues to take shape in the CBD, word has trickled out about…
These have drawn the downtown lunch crowd and Maypop, which is located on the opposite side of the building, will angle for this business too. However, Gulotta said developing the restaurant as a destination for after-hours drinks and dinner will be key.
Maypopโs predecessor here, Ursa Major, was intended to be a dinner time draw but lasted only a few months before closing last fall. It had an intricate zodiac theme worked across its menu and interior design, from light fixtures to booths modeled after stat chart patterns.
Maypop is starting fresh, removing most design aspects of the earlier restaurant, though keeping the bar largely intact. Maypop takes its name from the passion flower plant, whose colorful, intricately patterned blooms vine their way across the local landscape.
Gulotta was chef de cuisine at Restaurant August, John Beshโs lux flagship, before leaving to open MoPho with his brother Jeff Gulotta and their business partner Jeffrey Bybee. They added Rum & the Lash, the bar food operation inside Finn McCoolโs Irish Pub and early this year opened Tana.
Food & Wine magazine earlier this year named Gulotta to its list of , an honor he shares with 10 other chefs around the country.
Maypop
611 O'Keefe Ave.
Projected opening: late 2016