Chef Efren Hernandez is trading one kind of Hudson Valley restaurant for another. On May 14, Pez, his new coastal Mexican seafood restaurant, will open in the former Rivertown Lodge space in Hudson, closing the chapter on the kitchen he’s run since arriving in the region in 2020 and sharpening the focus of what comes next in one of the most anticipated restaurant openings of the year.
“I think one of the big catalysts was just feeling like there was a lot of places like us,” Hernandez says. “Every restaurant is a Hudson Valley farm-to-table restaurant. So what is our identity comparative to the rest of the Hudson Valley?”
That question is one he answered decisively with Casa Susanna, the wood-fired Mexican restaurant he opened in 2023 at Camptown in Leeds. Built around a rigorous masa program—nixtamalized corn, ground and shaped in-house into tortillas, tamales, and more—the restaurant quickly established itself as one of the region’s most distinctive kitchens, earning national attention and James Beard recognition. More importantly, it gave Hernandez a clear lane: Mexican cuisine rooted in tradition, filtered through Hudson Valley ingredients and technique.
Pez extends that thinking, but in a different direction. “Mariscos is some of my favorite food,” Hernández says. “When I go to Mexico, it’s probably the first thing I ask to eat.” Mariscos—Mexico’s coastal seafood tradition—centers on fresh fish and shellfish, often served raw or lightly cooked, with bright acidity, chile heat, and citrus.
Where Casa Susanna is built on masa, Pez will be built on seafood—specifically East Coast seafood, approached with the same constraints that shaped his work in Leeds. At Casa Susanna, that meant forgoing tropical staples like avocado in favor of what could be grown or sourced locally. At Pez, it means learning a new landscape. “I’m calling all the fishmongers,” he says. “What is available from the East Coast? And then I’m getting really into asking them about the bycatch.”
Bycatch—species caught incidentally in commercial fishing—has become one of the more interesting threads in the menu’s development. Hernandez points to Atlantic silversides, a small, sardine-like fish often overlooked.
“I was like, oh, can I get them?” he says. “I’m going to make charales—you fry the fish whole, then you toss it in chile and lime and salt, and then you just snack on them.”
The goal isn’t novelty so much as use—finding ways to make something delicious out of what’s available. “We’ll have a lot of common stuff too,” he says. “We’re not going to have just weird stuff.”
Other elements of the menu are still taking shape, but a few ideas have settled in. There will be whole grilled fish served with sourdough flour tortillas, curtido, and seasonal salsas, letting diners build their own tacos at the table. The tortillas themselves are an extension of Hernandez’s own history in kitchens: made with a sourdough starter he’s kept alive for nearly two decades. “I have a really good sourdough starter that’s been alive for a very long time,” he says. “Why wouldn’t I try to make tortillas taste better or more interesting?”
The result is subtle—a little tang, a little lift—but emblematic of how Hernandez works: take something familiar, adjust it just enough to make it distinct.
If the food marks a shift, the tone of the restaurant will, too. Hernandez describes Pez as lighter, more immediate, more in line with the energy of coastal Mexican cooking. “When I think of seafood, like Mexican seafood particularly, I see a lot of color, I see a lot of acid and heat,” he says. “Really punchy, really fun.”
“I don’t want people to come in and sit over a dish and take it too seriously,” he adds. “We take it very seriously in the kitchen—but we want the guests to have a good time.”
That distinction—between the seriousness of the work and the ease of the experience—has been a throughline since Casa Susanna opened. Hernandez has been consistent about how he wants his restaurants to meet diners, resisting the idea that unfamiliar cuisine needs to be explained from above. “I don’t want us educating people,” he says. “I want us sharing.”
The beverage program follows a similar logic. Developed with Natasha David, who also worked on Casa Susanna, it will focus on small-batch, Mexican-owned mezcal and tequila producers, along with fermented drinks. The one holdover: the margarita. “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it,” Hernandez says.
The space itself is being reworked—brighter, more colorful—but the larger shift is conceptual. Hernandez arrived in the Hudson Valley at a moment of uncertainty and quickly found his footing, first at Rivertown, then more decisively at Casa Susanna. Pez feels like the next step in that progression, narrowing the focus while expanding the range. “I’ve always had it in my head that I was going to open a seafood restaurant,” he says.
Now, with Pez, he is.
