Today’s Special: Wilson’s Seafood Pasta

Clams. Shrimp. Escargot. Calamari. 

All elements are crucial to Wilson Coronel’s seafood pasta marinara. But the secret to its exquisite flavor is in the sauce. 

“You have to reduce it, so it’s not too much and the taste comes through,” Coronel said on a recent late afternoon in the pocket-sized kitchen of the Westville institution that is Manjares Cafe.

Coronel is the chef of the latest iteration of the tapas bar, which recently opened in a space adjacent and connected to the popular West Rock Avenue breakfast- and lunch-serving cafe. 

The tapas bar will feature dinner, including tapas that range from fried calamari to truffle fries to papas bravas, as well as entrees and drinks.

Coronel met owner Ana De Los Angeles six years ago. Recently, ​“she called and asked if I can work for her,” he said, as he washed clams in cold water and added them to a pan sizzling with oil. 

“I love how he cooks, it’s not heavy, not too salty, it’s clean, fresh, which is really really important for me,” said De Los Angeles, who appeared in the kitchen. 

It was opening time for the tapas bar, which for now is open Thursday and Saturdays from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m., with Friday’s salsa nights extending hours to midnight. It was also in the midst of a historically frigid weekend and people, it seemed, were opting to stay home. 

De Los Angeles, a Dominican-born pastry chef, opened Manjares as a coffee shop in 2009 after she and her husband Miguel Trelles, a painter, moved from New York City to Westville, the beneficiaries of an ArLOW (Art Lofts West) grant that afforded them artist housing. 

Gradually, Manjares, which means ambrosia, or food of the gods, became known for not just its pastries, but its neighborly spirit and the welcoming warmth of its owner. De Los Angeles, who had been the pastry chef at Lulu’s in East Rock before opening the coffee shop, said many of her customers migrated each morning to Westville. 

“It was doing well, very well, so [in 2014] we added an evening tapas menu, but then the head chef went back to the Dominican Republic, so we went back to breakfast and lunch,” De Los Angeles said, as Coronel added olive oil and chopped garlic to a large pan. 

She tried again in 2019, with Manjares Tapas, but this time it proved too physically demanding to run both businesses day and night. ​“I was working 7 a.m. to 1 a.m.,” she said. 

That’s where Coronel, who got his start in the restaurant industry at the swanky Freds Madison at Barneys, came in. Originally from Cuenca, Ecuador, he moved to New York in 2004. He was 26. 

He recalled former President Bill Clinton coming in to Freds. ​“He would eat chicken with balsamic and mozzarella and focaccia pizza,” said Coronel as he added chicken stock to the pan. 

“Not too much or it’ll be too watery,” he said of the chicken stock.

At a certain point Coronel decided to move to Connecticut. His first job was at Bistro Mediterranean and Tapas Bar on East Haven’s Main Street. From there, it was onto Caffe Bravo on Orange, where he worked for 10 years, and then Half Moon in Wallingford. 

“I like the kitchen,” Coronel said, introducing a handful of clams to the pan. A flame leapt up. ​“I like to cook.” He tamed the fire with another pan. ​“I cook any food, anything. I can make fusion food, and also Latin food, European, Italian.”

At that moment, Gerardo Perez appeared. Perez works the kitchen during the breakfast and lunch shift. He started at Manjares six months after De Los Angeles opened in 2009. 

De Los Angeles said she heard about Perez from a contact at Lulu’s.

“He came to our cafe and he didn’t know anything, he’s only 18, and I say ​‘Gerardo, I can teach you, I’m going to teach you what I paid $50,000 in school to learn,’” said De Los Angeles, who studied pastry making at the Culinary Institute of New York before her 2005 arrival in New Haven. “‘I’m going to teach you for free.’”

“It was only Ana, her husband, and me, and there was no kitchen, none of this,” said Perez, a native of Puebla, Mexico, watching Coronel add marinara sauce to the assortment of clams, shrimp, and calamari sizzling in their juices. A heady aroma wafted through the kitchen.

“Marinara is brighter and thinner than tomato sauce,” Coronel said, sprinkling parsley on the mix. ​“You can really taste the tomato.” 

De Los Angeles recalled Perez’s hard work and commitment when the cafe was two tables and a couch.

“Better times will come,” she said Perez would tell her every day.

“This guy is my right hand,” she said, as Coronel strained water from a pot boiling on the back burner before introducing the sauce to the pasta. ​“Gerardo is among the reasons we can realize our dream of having Manjares a place where people can come at night and enjoy themselves.” 

Herman Ventura, a customer who’s been partnering with De Los Angeles in the tapas bar enterprise, entered the kitchen. ​“I’ll be in the cafe,” he told her.

By then, Coronel was laying the clams around a bed of pasta, then setting the shrimp, calamari, and escargots inside with meticulous care.

“That’s it,” he said, beaming a smile. 

Out in the cafe, Ventura was nursing a cup of tea. De Los Angeles joined him. 

An architect-trained estimator in construction who lives in the Spring Glen neighborhood of Hamden, Ventura said he first came to Manjares during the pandemic when he was working remotely.

“It’s a place where you’re comfortable being with other people or sitting alone in a corner and just being with yourself,” he said, amid the bold graphic paintings of Miguel Trelles, De Los Angeles’ husband enlivening the walls, and the sound of Caribbean music filtering through the mellow light. 

“I frequent other restaurants in this area, which I love, but there’s a different energy and there’s a time frame. Here there’s no time frame.”

He said he’s watched groups of morning regulars come in — ​“guys from the fire department, nurses from Yale, retirees.” He’s watched the place get busy, sometimes overwhelming the one person in charge, who’s usually De Los Angeles’ granddaughter Josephine Weiss.

“They’ll come up and pay and say ​‘this is for two cups of coffee,’ it’s not on a piece of paper,” he said. ​“It’s just a lot of trust.”

“There is a sort of magic here, and that’s the reason for the tapas bar, so we can keep that going in the evenings,” he said, adding that a Harlem Jazz Nights music series is slated to begin on March 4.

“That magic, that’s the special sauce.” 

Packed as it was with fresh seafood goodness, Wilson’s dish was at once an aesthetic masterpiece and a veritable symphony of lively flavors and textures. True to his promise, the marinara tangily sang out its tomato essence, with the pasta affording a soothing base. 

All in all, the seafood pasta marinara left this correspondent feeling that all was right in the world.