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Montclair is about to go seriously upscale.
When it opens in May, Bar Franco, which adjoins the restaurant Fresco da Franco on Church Street, will offer a $1,000 dessert, said owner Franco Porporino.
That’s not a typo. Called “La Bomba,” the diamond-shaped confection consists of a vanilla cookie topped with chocolate mousse and vanilla cream and flecked with 24-karat gold leaf. It comes with a diamond-encrusted spoon, which patrons can keep, and a shot of Louis XIII cognac. (The cognac goes for $4,300 for a 750 ml. bottle.)
“When you order a dessert of that magnitude, you get to take the spoon home,” Porporino said.
The dessert was created by the Parisian-trained pastry chef Jayce Baudry of the eponymous shop next door. Baudry is the former executive pastry chef to Daniel Boulud in Manhattan. His pastries are so intricate and artistic they are featured in a framed window on Church Street.
“I told Jayce, create the most over-the-top dessert you’ve ever made,” Porporino said.
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Rest assured that, for your grand, you are getting top-quality ingredients. The mousse is made with “72% Venezuela single-origin Valrhona chocolate and is infused with Wild Kopi Luwak coffee,” he said. Six different vanillas are used to make the cream – from Madagascar, Uganda, Tanzania, New Caledonia, Tahiti and Papua New Guinea. Inside are “caramel pearls” − puffs of wheat enrobed with milk chocolate and caramel.
Porporino, whose Fresco da Franco restaurant is frequented by the Real Housewives of New Jersey, said he felt the need to do something “completely out of the box” because of all the competition in town.
“When you look at what’s going on in Montclair, everyone’s trying to come in and make a lot of noise,” he said.
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Just this week, three restaurants opened a block away on Glenridge Avenue – The Maddox and Musuko, which both have bars, and Luigino’s, which is BYOB.
Porporino said the drinks at Bar Franco, which he describes as a “bespoke aperitivo bar with a unique, opulent, old-world Harry Cipriani vibe,” will also be “out of this world.” The mixologists, led by Lucca Cinalli, who is “world-renowned,” he said, are from Italy. After a lot of fine-tuning there are now 20 bespoke cocktails on the menu.
The menu is top secret, but earlier he mentioned ingredients, like Pendennis Club bourbon, chokeberry and amaro, green juniper, peated dry vermouth, homemade coconut wine, and slow-cooked chai palm syrup, and said there would be unusual presentations and infusions.
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Cocktails will cost $20 to $25, he said, and there will be a “high-end tapas menu.”
In a basement speak-easy called La Tana, open only to those personally invited, will be a Prohibition-era aesthetic, with flapper shows and flapper girls, he said.
Porporino, who lives in Palm Beach, Florida, said he doesn’t mind that some in Montclair, which prides itself on its progressivism, have not welcomed his new concept with open arms.
Among his descriptions that set off a flood of negative comments on social media was the “velvet rope” to keep the bar “ultra-exclusive, like Studio 54” and his desire to bring a “New York vibe” to the area, which some see as overdeveloped with too many upscale establishments.
In fact, he seems to enjoy the attention. “I love to see the crazy comments,” he said.
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