Mofongo delivers delicious, authentic food made fresh daily

Dining doesn’t have to fancy or expensive to be rich and flavorful, to conjure memories of home or island vacations, or to inspire culinary adventures. Discover delicious Puerto Rican cuisine with an American twist at Mofongo in Willimantic.

What is Mofongo?

The food: a traditional Puerto Rican dish, a savory combination of fried green plantains, chicharrón (crispy pork rinds), olive oil and lots of garlic, hand mashed in a wooden mortar and pestle called a pilón. The mixture is shaped into a ball and served with an array of condiments, sauces and meats. Mofongo is the epitome of fusion cuisine, as the technique, ingredients and flavors come from West Africa, Spain, and the indigenous Taíno of the Caribbean islands.

The rest a ura nt: located in the old Friendly’s building on Main Street in Willimantic, Mofongo is the model restaurant and test kitchen for a “fast-casual” family-owned chain that features Puerto Rican comfort food with an American fusion twist. They serve delicious, authentic food made fresh daily that’s also convenient and competitively priced.

Wlllimantic is one of the more diverse communities in rural, northeast Connecticut. It has a relatively large Hispanic population. Many families immigrated from Mexico and Puerto Rico to work at the local textile mills starting in the mid-twentieth century. It surprised restauranteurs Enrique and Julie Rodriguez when they learned there were no Puerto Rican restaurants in town. The Rodriguezes live in nearby Hebron, so choosing Willimantic for the home base of their flagship restaurant (with four other locations in Connecticut) made sense. “We always wanted to contribute to the community with something nice,” says Enrique. They saw need and potential for investing in Willimantic.

Enrique and Julie have a wealth of experience in the restaurant industry. The couple met 16 years ago working at the Cheesecake Factory in West Hartford, where Enrique was executive chef and Julie front of the house manager. “It all started at the Cheese,” Julie jokes. They worked in various corporate restaurants, opened their own in Hartford, and eventually purchased the Mofongo concept from restauranteur and friend Vincent Placeres in August 2023. Today, the couple owns seven restaurants— including the Mofongo in Willimantic and four other locations (in Hartford, New Britain and New Haven) and the Brick Cantina, a Mexican restaurant in Hebron.

The old Friendly’s on Main Street had been vacant for four years before Enrique and Julie purchased it and completely renovated the building. They brought in hand-picked staff from their other locations and hired six more employees from town. Now that the restaurant has been running smoothly for over a year, they are considering expanded hours for breakfast and lunch and maybe a Sunday family dinner special. “There’s lots of people who go to church and don’t have time to cook,” says Enrique. “We think Willimantic has great opportunity for growth,” he says. “It has great food; great people, and we love to be part of it.”

THE MOFONGO VIBE

Puerto Rican food is comfort food. Rich, warm, and savory but not spicy. Ingredients emphasize plantains, meat (pork, chicken, beef), rice and beans, and sauces. There are many fried options, but Mofongo’s dishes are not greasy. Garlic, fresh herbs and sofrito (a blend of peppers, onions, garlic, cilantro and culantro) offer rich flavor and aroma.

The Willimantic restaurant is casual, comfortable, and impeccably clean. For those who recall the old Friendly’s (bright light, hard booths, cold Formica), the new atmosphere is warm and welcoming. Latin music plays in the background and the smell of good food greets you as you cross the threshold. With help of a designer, the Rodriguezes gutted the inside, replaced fluorescents with soft lighting, painted the walls a sandy tone, added a dark acoustic tiled ceiling. A mural by KRSART Studio (Kendall Soliwoda, New Britain) graces most of an entire wall with an island scene–a palm-lined road leads between colorful houses hung with proudly waving Puerto Rican flags to a sandy beach and turquoise water in the distance.

At Mofongo, you build your own meal. You start with a base, either rice (white or yellow) or Mofongo (smashed fried plantains). Then you add protein (pork, chicken, shrimp, beef, beans) and appetizers and desserts if you like. Everything is displayed in cases, hot and cold. First is salads (potato, pasta, seafood), then a steam table with dozens of entrees, each one fresh, hot, tempting. There are many saucy choices plus items like fried chicken, roasted pork, spareribs, yucca, and much more. If you don’t know what something is, just ask! Next, a glass case with appetizers: four different empanadas, sorullitos—corn meal with cheese filling, alcapurria (fried bites with fillings). Finally, a case of desserts: flan, tres leches, dulce de leche. You decide what you want and the counter attendant fills your bowl to overflowing. Fresh fruit juices (mango, strawberry, passion fruit) are jewel tones in glass dispensers behind the counter. Other soft drinks and water are in a self-serve cooler.

I get the grand tour of food choices from Executive Chef Ramon Rodriguez, a Puerto Rican native who’s been in culinary arts for 40 years. He was working at a well-known hotel in New York City and moved to CT to work with Enrique seven years ago. Chef Ramon asks me what I like, describes every dish, and tells me a very popular choice is the sweet chili chicken. “Everything is fresh. Nothing is from the day before,” he says. Chef Ramon creates the menus for all the Mofongo locations. When he tries new recipes, Julie and Enrique taste and offer final approval.

According to Enrique, people love Mofongo. “The Google reviews are great. We’ve got so many regulars. We’re very proud of it. We moved our team here from different locations, handpicked them to make sure that everything was perfect. This is like our first baby, you can say, in the Mofongo chain. We want to continue growing in the state and beyond, so we need a role model.”

“We are a scratch kitchen,” Julie emphasizes. “We have an executive chef and a prep kitchen where staff peel and chop 40 cases of plantains a week—that’s a lot of work!” The mofongo, especially, must be mashed fresh every morning because it does not reheat well. They tell me that if I can’t finish mine to come back for more tomorrow instead of taking it home. “The pilón, that we smash it in, we get them shipped from Puerto Rico,” says Julie. “One of our managers, his family still lives there, so his mom goes shopping for us.”

The menu features two or three new or different items every week. Specials on the day I visited were meatballs (similar to Italian but with a fresh herb flavor), oxtail (soup-like with corn, potatoes, onions, carrots) and pastelón (a sweet-savory lasagna made with layers of yellow plantain, ground beef and topped with gooey cheese).

“When it’s cold, we make soups,” says Enrique. “And there’s stuff that always stays on the menu, like arroz con gandules (rice with pigeon peas), pernil (slow roasted pulled pork), chuleta (pork chop) and other traditional dishes.” “Everything’s handmade,” Julie says. “They make the empanadas, the paparellenos, the alcapurrias.”

These are fried appetizers of dough with fillings of potatoes and/or meat. Mofongo’s pizza empanada is a good example of giving old favorites American flair. “We put our own spin on the food, too, because we’re Puerto Rican-American fusion,” says Julie. “We like to mix it up a little bit just to be creative.”

“We want everybody who is not from Puerto Rico to come and get a little taste of our idea of the island,” says Enrique. If you’ve never tried Puerto Rican cooking, it’s time. Head to Willimantic for a treat of fresh, delicious comfort food at Mofongo.

Mofongo is located at 1405 Main Street in Willimantic. Other locations can be found at mofongorestaurant.com