Amá, new restaurant serving Mexican cuisine, to open next year at Fishtown-Kensington border

A new restaurant serving elevated Mexican-inspired cuisine will open next year at the Fishtown-Kensington border.

Amá, located at 101 West Oxford Street on the corner of Front and Oxford Streets, will be the first restaurant by Frankie Ramirez — a self-taught chef from Mexico City who has led kitchens at LMNO, Parc and Enoteca Tredici. He is opening Amá with his wife, Veronica, and fellow married restaurateurs Roberto Medina and Crisalida Mata, who own La Catrina in Media and are also partners in Spasso Italian Grill in Media and Agave Mexican Cuisine in Chadds Ford. They said they expect to open Amá, another word for "mother" in Spanish, early in 2025.

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The restaurant will fill a 4,300 square-foot space featuring 120 seats — including 20 seats at the bar and another 12 at a chef’s table near the kitchen — plus there will be room for an additional 10 outdoor seats when weather permits. For the interior, designers from BoxWood Architects incorporated traditional Mexican decor with modern touches. There's also an open kitchen, allowing patrons to see and smell the chefs' work on the coal and wood-fired grill.

The menu at Amá will be seasonal and feature hand-pressed tortillas and more than 20 items inspired by the six main culinary regions of Mexico — including the Yucatán Peninsula, the pacific coast, northern Mexico, central Mexico, the Gulf of Mexico and the Baja region. Much of the menu will be shareable, with entrees like whole grilled fish, coal roasted octopus, head-on prawns al carbon and non-traditional cuts of steak for carne asada. 

According to Ramirez, Amá will offer "old flavors, new hands, timeless recipes and new traditions."  

"When you visit Mexico, you always feel welcome," he said in a release. "If I had to define Amá in a few words, those words would be 'delicious heartfelt experiences.'"

There will also be appetizers like tacos, tosadas and ceviches, and a variety of house-made desserts. The bar will serve craft cocktails with a focus on tequila and mezcal, plus local beer and wine. The restaurant will only be open for dinner to start.

At age 16, Ramirez moved from Mexico City to Philadelphia, where he began working as a dishwasher at Stephen Starr’s Washington Square (now Talula’s Garden). He scored his first line cook position at Bliss on South Broad Street, where he met his wife Veronica, who was working as a pastry chef and helped train him. Ramirez also worked as a line cook at several Starr restaurants, like Morimoto and Butcher and Singer. He was part of the team at Parc when it opened in 2008, and he rose through the ranks to become sous chef there. He landed his first executive chef position in 2016, overseeing multiple locations of Tredici Enoteca, then worked as executive chef at The Refectory Grill in Villanova in 2019. In 2020, he became the opening chef at LMNO in Fishtown, where he stayed for four years until he decided to open his first restaurant.