Amada, Jose Garces’ flagship Spanish restaurant, opens on the Main Line

Amid a string of recent restaurant openings, chef Jose Garces has taken his Spanish-themed Amada, his first-born, to the Main Line.

It’s now open for dinner daily next to Fleming’s steakhouse in the Radnor Financial Center (555 E. Lancaster Ave., Wayne). Lunch and brunch are on the way.

This third Amada location, Garces’ eighth opening in a year, has new touches — one you’ll see and one you probably won’t. There’s a rolling cart stocked with mixers and garnishes for tableside gin-and-tonic service, while behind the line are two Mibrasa charcoal oven-grills that cook food up to 900 degrees and imbue dishes with a desirable char.

What you also will see is the general layout, which wasn’t changed much from Brandywine Realty Trust’s previous tenants Harvest Seasonal Grill & Wine Bar and Susanna Foo. The inherited pizza oven will be used to cook paellas and the suckling pigs.

Nonetheless, this restaurant looks very much like an Amada, done in a Spanish Colonial Revival style that balances soft grays against the blues, sienna, and ochre from the Spanish color palette. There’s an open kitchen that lines almost the entire back wall.

Wrought-iron accents and lamps divide the bar seating from the main room, there’s plenty of stucco and exposed reclaimed wood, and marble tops the bar and the kitchen line.

Amada, whose location on Chestnut Street in Old City opened in 2005, was Garces’ first solo restaurant after he left the employ of Stephen Starr, for whom he had been chef de cuisine of Alma de Cuba and El Vez.

In 2012, Garces opened an Amada at Revel Casino in Atlantic City, now Ocean Casino. He also had an Amada in New York City from 2016 to 2018.

Garces nowadays is mixing casual (Buena Onda, his expanding Baja-style taqueria) with concepts that, in his words, “are upscale-casual teetering on fine dining.” He also counts the Olde Bar in Old City, Volvér at the Kimmel Center, and Village Whiskey in Rittenhouse in that category.

In the middle are Hook & Master in Kensington and Garces Trading Co. locations at the Cira Centre and Kimmel Center. He also has a concession at the Wells Fargo Center called Garces Eats.

The bar list will have 100 Spanish wines and cocktails inspired by Spanish ingredients, and sangria. And there’s free valet parking.