La Rana Rossa, Chef Brad Brown's new Jamaica Plain cafe and pizzeria, started serving lunch Monday, and has targeted a projected date for nightly dinner service.
Brown and his fiancée and business partner, Ginger Russell, shared the new lunch menu with Jamaica Plain News. It includes breakfast sandwiches ($6.99) from 7:30 a.m., salads starting at $6.50 and hot and cold lunch sandwiches served on baked-in-house bread for $7.50:
The cafe, located across from the Green Street T station in the former Cafe Bartlett Square space, also hosted its first "Pizza Party" this past Friday, taking the reins from The Blue Frog, Brown's JP bakery, which had previously held the pop-ups.
Russell tells Jamaica Plain News that the restaurant hopes to start nightly dinner service featuring pizza starting Monday, Feb. 29, with specialty pies ranging from the pizza puttanesca with spicy tomato sauce, garlic, red onions, anchovies, capers and black olives infused with truffle oil, to the "three fine meats” with Genoa salami, capicola and soppressata.
Since December, La Rana Rossa -- "The Red Frog," in Italian -- has been serving breakfast items, including croissants, muffins, scones and coffee.
La Rana Rossa's ramp-up represents one of several Jamaica Plain restaurants anticipated to open this winter, a group that includes Pink Samurai on Centre Street, a second Grass Fed location in Forest Hills and an "Express" location of Il Panino on South Street.
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Ginger Russell
Chef Brad Brown shows off one of his creations, a sausage and ricotta pie.