Robert Encarnacion opened La Fonda Street in June 2024 and the Encarnacion coffee shop next to it as a soft opening that November. Both occupy a renovated duplex at 8016 Kercheval Avenue in West Village, the building Encarnacion bought from the Detroit Land Bank in April 2021. The dual-concept space took an official ribbon-cutting from Deputy Mayor Melia Howard on March 26, 2025.
The food had been feeding the neighborhood for months by then. Encarnacion came to Detroit in July 2019 from Miami after a weekend visit in April. He worked as a banker for Bank of America for several years, with a focus on small business clients in the city.
The coffee idea sparked during the pandemic, in a class he took on French press latte art. By April 2021 he had a building. Construction took longer than planned, mostly because of inflation and the cost of bringing the building up to code.
La Fonda Street is the larger restaurant, fast-casual Latin American street food at $2 to $17 a plate. The Dominican Bowl is the hit. So is Taco Tuesday at $2 a taco.
The menu draws on Mexican, Dominican, Puerto Rican, Venezuelan, and Jamaican cooking, the same approach as the original La Fonda Street in Brighton, Boston, which Encarnacion runs with co-founder Mio Ramirez. The Detroit version is, by his own description, a replica. Encarnacion the coffee bar is smaller, serving espresso drinks with a Cuban-Miami sensibility.
The house drink is the Encarnacion Original. The breakfast menu is grab-and-go. A $65,000 Motor City Match cash grant made the project work.
The money paid for a commercial kitchen hood, an ADA-compliant elevator, and other build-out costs. The grant came through Round 20. La Fonda Street and Encarnacion together count as the program's 181st business opening since the program launched.
Invest Detroit and the Detroit Development Fund put in additional capital. In its first year, La Fonda Street made the Detroit News best-new-restaurants conversation. The staff is all local.
The patio runs Latin music in warmer months. The Kercheval corridor has been adding small businesses for several years now. La Fonda is one more.
8016 Kercheval Ave., Detroit
