Jamonera to open in January
Sherry and Spanish small plates from Turney and Safran at 13th and Sansom.
Marcie Turney and Valerie Safran, the doyennes of Midtown (Barbuzzo, Lolita), are looking to mid-January for the rollout of Jamonera (105 S. 13th St., 215-922-6061), the cozy Spanish tapas bar replacing Bindi.
(They really can't open much earlier, as the dining room is bnow a veritable holiday shipping operation of chocolates from their candy business, Marcie Blaine.)
They're basing the Jamonera concept on tapas joints they encountered during a trip to southern Spain, whose cuisine - besides being accompanied by plenty of sherry - borrows from the broad Mediterranean and the Moors, more or less. It's named after the clamp that holds down an Iberian ham for slicing.
Menu samples (priced $4 to $36, small snacks to composed plates):
Banderillas of olives, boquerones and guindilla peppers
Crispy Calasparra Rice with heirloom pumpkin, chestnuts and La Quercia Acorn Edition jamon
Moorish Skewers of Lamb with spiced yogurt, mint and pickled chiles
House-Cured Cecina with artichokes, fennel and amontillado sherry.
In a statement, the decor by Tim Shaaban of Urban Space Development is described as sultry, with vintage illustrations advertising Bizet's opera Carmen (as well as a 7-by-8-foot Carmen mural), dark Rioja-stained wood and amber lighting, antique mirrors on the walls, a 20-foot copper bar top that will age slowly and develop a patina, European oak floors, hand-carved wood chandeliers, and repurposed table tops from beams of a local factory.