Robert Encarnación bought the building at 8016 Kercheval Avenue from the Detroit Land Bank in April 2021. It took him four years to open it. The renovation was technical: installing a commercial kitchen hood, building an ADA-compliant elevator, splitting one structure into two distinct restaurant concepts.
By the time Detroit's Deputy Mayor Melia Howard cut a ribbon outside in March 2025, the place had already been quietly operating for nine months.Encarnación is from the Dominican Republic. He moved to Detroit in 2019 after living in Miami, where rising rents pushed him out and where his interest in Latin American coffee culture had taken root. The two-restaurant build at 8016 Kercheval reflects that split.
Encarnación, the coffee shop at the front, focuses on espresso drinks like the house-named Encarnación Original, plus grab-and-go breakfast. La Fonda Street, the main restaurant in the back, serves fast-casual Latin American food: Dominican stewed chicken bowls, $2 tacos on Tuesdays, Venezuelan cachapas, ropa vieja, dishes that range from $2 to $17.He runs the operation with his partner Mío Ramírez. The Detroit location is the second La Fonda Street; the first sits in Brighton, Boston, between Boston University and Boston College.
The brand draws on the partners' Puerto Rican and Dominican heritage and their 20-plus years living in the U.S., which means the menu doesn't sit neatly inside any one Latin American national cuisine. The Detroit Economic Growth Corporation marked the West Village opening as Motor City Match's 181st brick-and-mortar to date. A $65,000 Motor City Match grant covered the kitchen hood and elevator and a chunk of the build cost.
Encarnación staffs the place entirely with Detroiters. La Fonda Street landed at No. 4 on Detroit's 2025 Top 10 new restaurants list, and the room seats 16, the kind of place where you eat a Dominican bowl across the table from someone you don't know.The space was a vacant two-family home before Encarnación bought it. The split-level layout allows the two concepts to share infrastructure without sharing identity.
He called the project a crazy idea at the start. The crazy idea took four years to land.Encarnación and La Fonda Street, 8016 Kercheval Avenue, Detroit.
