By Bill Parry
A young couple from Maspeth has created a new buzz with “grab-and-go” tapas at the Food Box, the Falchi Building’s hip culinary spot for vendors. Berta Emilia Vivas, a graduate of the French Culinary Institute, and her fiance Diego Alejandro Rivera, a line cook at Irving Plaza’s Casa Mono, started Don Tapas last month.
“For us it’s been a wonderful surprise that people like it so much,” Vivas said. The Spanish-centric cuisine, with influences from Peru, Venezuela and Colombia, has been so successful that Don Tapas frequently runs out of product soon after lunchtime.
“We make all the tapas fresh daily with locally sourced ingredients such as Serrano Ham, traditional chorizo and manchego cheese from Despana Brands in Jackson Heights and bread from the Rollo Mio Bakery in Maspeth,” Vivas said. “Customers choose two or three tapas varieties and you can try something new each time. It’s the perfect pick-me-up for people on the go, like the students across the street at LaGuardia Community College.”
Items on the menu include the Don Pan con Tomate; Serran Ham with tomato and garlic on a baguette, to the Il Padrino, pork meatballs with manchego cheese and piparras in a Mamma Mia sauce, to the Chorizo Montadito, traditional Spanish chorizo with roasted onion and piquillo peppers.
Don Tapas also offers several choices for vegetarians and beverages from Spain and Peru.
The Falchi Building, at 31-00 47th Ave., is abuzz with activity these days. Jamestown Properties, the owners of the popular Chelsea Market, purchased the former Gimbels Department store warehouse for more than $80 million in 2012. It is now 92-93 percent occupied with high-profile tenants such as The Doughnut Plant, Juice Press, the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission and the tech innovating non-profit Coalition for Queens.
Vivas and Rivera thought the 2,000-square-foot Food Box, where vendors prepare their meals off-site, was a great place to start a new business. “We’re both chefs and we wanted to start with something small,” Vivas said. “Hopefully, by the end of the year we’ll be able to move into a restaurant of our own.”
For Vivas, a native of Venezuela, and Rivera, from Colombia, it is their first business venture together.
“We met doing catering at William Hallet in Astoria,” she said of the bistro and bar at 36-10 30th Ave. “That’s where we fell in love.”
Reach reporter Bill Parry by e-mail at bparr
