By James Lomuscio
Opening up a new restaurant in Westport’s highly competitive atmosphere is undoubtedly daunting. It’s even more challenging if it’s your first time owning one.
Revisson Bonfim will live the American Dream when he opens his Boca restaurant in space occupied for 20 years by Acqua Ristorante Mediterraneo. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Dave Matlow for WestportNow.com
But for Revisson Bonfim, a 42-year-old investment banker who studies emerging markets, the planned opening of his Boca restaurant in August at the site of soon-to-close Acqua Ristorante Mediterraneo at 43 Main St. facing Parker Harding Plaza is the American Dream coming full circle. The restaurant, whose name is Spanish for mouth, will offer dishes from Spain, Italy and France.
“I’m originally from Brazil, and I moved to the United States when I was 16,” said the East Norwalk resident. “My very first job in the United States was working at a restaurant in Greenwich.”
The place was Manero’s, the same company that for decades had an iconic Saugatuck restaurant at the site that is now Rizzuto’s.
“My first job was that of a dishwasher, and then I went from a dishwasher to a bus boy to a waiter,” he said about his jobs from 1990-95.
From 1995 until be graduated from Sacred Heart University with a degree in finance and international business in 1999, he worked as Centro in Greenwich.
Afterwards, Bonfim left the restaurant world for a corporate career at GE Capital, getting his MBA at the University of Connecicut along the way. Still, the restaurant and hospitality business beckoned.
“I’ve been coming to Acqua for over a decade,” he said of the 20-year Mediterranean mainstay specializing in Italian cuisine. “I was fortunate enough to see the place at its peak, but then I saw its slow deterioration.”
On Monday, partners of Z Hospitality Group, which owns Acqua, announced the restaurant would serve up its last meals June 30, as they decided not to renew their lease. (See WestportNow June 6, 2016)
Bonfim said he had heard from a friend who is a chef at one of the Z Hospitality restaurants about Acqua’s closing and approached the New York City-based landlord Win Properties. He received a five-year lease, 15 total with two options to renew.
“I thought it was an attractive lease for the area, especially if it is my first restaurant,” he said, though not disclosing his monthly rent. “I believe we put together a competitive lease that will allow us to stay.”
So, too will the business strategy of Boca, says Bonfim.
His trifecta of Mediterranean cuisine comes from three of its regions—Spain, Italy and France. If one party wants paella, the other pasta, the other duck a l’orange, no problem.
Bonfim also boasts his chef, Luis Arias of Molto, is the best is all three. He also plans to use the place’s wood fire oven for more than just pizza, but meats, vegetables and fish.
On July 1, Bonfim gets the key to the place, and from then until an expected opening mid-August, the first floor and two main dining rooms on the second will be renovated.
He also hopes to capitalize on the spring-summer, bump-out patio in Parker Harding Plaza.
In addition, Bonfim said that he and his wife and two small children plan to relocate to Westport from East Norwalk. Coming to Westport, he said, was the right move.
“It just made sense,” he said.
