Latin restaurant Sazon Y Fuego coming to Newburgh

My God, this is going to be awesome!

We got a sneak peek at the upcoming Sazon Y Fuego restaurant in Newburgh, the newest restaurant in Randy Hobson’s Pangea family of restaurants, which includes Pangea Kitchen, Pangea Pizzeria and Second Language Ramen Kitchen.

Sazon Y Fuego is a Spanish phrase that means “Favor and Fire,” and you’ll find both here. The restaurant will feature authentic and inspired dishes from Mexico, Central America, and South America.

It’s a great time to introduce Evan Mooney, Pangea Holdings’ new COO. Mooney attended Castle High School and began waiting tables in restaurants at the age of 16. He quickly discovered a passion for cooking and cooked at Cavanaugh’s before eventually attending the Culinary Institute of America. He found his niche in high-level service and traveled the country gaining skills as a restaurant manager at venues as diverse as the Beverly Wiltshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, an upscale French-Mexican fusion restaurant in Dallas and more.

He always imagined a future closer to his family and eventually returned to the area where he met Hobson. It was a good match.

“We’ve reached a point where we need more knowledge and expertise outside of the local market,” Hobson said. “So Evan has been a huge asset to the company. He’s everything I don’t have to bring that level of service and operational excellence.”

“I found my niche,” Mooney said. “Not just with Randy and the owners, but with the managers and employees. Everyone is really passionate about the kitchen and wants to take it to the next level and advance the people under their responsibility.”

That said, much of Sazon Y Fuego’s staff is made up of veteran Hobson employees and will be brought in from other Pangea locations to broaden their skills and move up the ranks. Examples include Bo Luna, a pizza maker at Pangea Kitchen, and Brian Reyes, who was a chef at 2nd Language.

Why Latin cuisine?

“I was inspired by two years of traveling, visiting restaurants and seeing the influx of Latino professionals in the area,” Hobson said. “I was inspired by the food, and the final piece of the puzzle was to make some of the best food in the world our benchmark and bring in consultants to help make that happen. The biggest thing was that we already had a strong population of Latino employees in our restaurants, incredible workers, who wanted to do more. Bo (Luna) is a great example. He came to us and said, ‘Hey, I went to school on pizza, I learned what I could learn, I want to do more.’ So we have a very strong workforce of people from cultural heritage. You see Latin cuisine is growing if you look at what they’re doing in Mexico City, look at Oaxaca City. That’s what we’re looking for.”

Sazon Y Fuego employs people from Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Guatemala (for now) and draws inspiration from the local cuisines of each. Recipe testing has been fun, with each employee making empanadas in the style of their home country to see which one fits best on the menu.

The restaurant’s interior will be designed with a southern-border feel, from the cool natural tones of a desert landscape to a modern interpretation of prehistoric paintings from Colombian rock shelters.

On the menu

The menu at Sazon Y Fuego is not yet finalized, but it will be varied and refined. While the dishes will be inspired by rustic country cooking, the production and presentation will be impeccable and all components will be made entirely from scratch, right down to the corn dough.

That’s right. There won’t be many tortillas and tacos on the menu, but corn dishes, including sopes, Venezuelan arepas and others, will use organic, locally grown, starchy blue, white or yellow corn that’s prepared and milled on-site.

This means that even the nixtamalization process, which involves using lime to soften and partially remove the outer shell of corn kernels before grinding them into a paste, will take place right in Sazon Y Fuego’s kitchen. A special grinder will complete the transformation into fresh masa.

Another special piece of equipment is the small but powerful charcoal oven. It will be used for Peruvian charcoal-roasted chicken and many other dishes. Hobson says most of the menu items will have an element prepared in the oven to take on the authentic flavor of charcoal.

The bar

Sazon Y Fuego’s bar and drinks menu will also focus on authentic and unusual products from Mexico, Central and South America.

You’ll find chicha morada, a Peruvian drink made from simmered purple corn, sweet spices, sugar and pineapple. Mezcal (a smoky tequila-like spirit produced in southern Mexico that contains an agave worm in the bottle) will be on the cocktail menu, as will Central American rums and wines produced in the region. European wines will also be on the bar menu.

No opening date has been set for Sazon Y Fuego yet, but Hobson is hoping for something around the end of September.

Sazon Y Fuego will be at 8666 Ruffian Lane in Newburgh.