Chef Teresa Montaño leaves Ración for new project

Ración, the lovely Basque-influenced restaurant in Old Pasadena opened in 2012 by executive chef Teresa Montaño and general manager Loretta Peng, and one of Jonathan Gold’s 101 Best Restaurants, has lost one of its founding partners. Montaño quietly left the restaurant a few weeks ago to work on a new project of her own.

“Most of my motivation is that I want to try something new, and see how I measure up against the big boys,” Montaño said Monday. As for her new project, “I don’t have a lot of details yet. It’ll still be under the umbrella of Spanish cuisine.”

Montaño’s sous chef Shane Alvord has taken over as chef de cuisine, while Peng remains Ración’s general manager and owner.

Ración has always been a kind of secret handshake restaurant, a quiet and unobtrusive yet ambitious place on tree-lined, one-way Green Street, just south of Colorado Boulevard’s busy shopping thoroughfare. (The space was once home to the Michelin-starred Italian restaurant Tre Venezie.) At Ración, the two women — who met when they worked for Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger at the first Border Grill food truck — built a menu around Spanish cooking. In Spain, raciones are the larger portions on a menu, rather than the smaller snacks of tapas and pintxos — thus both the name and the dinner on your plates.

Alvord has been part of the Ración team for a long time, having also worked at Border Grill’s truck — which seems to function as a kind of kitchen incubator for chefs in L.A. “He’s the one that knows my food. He’s incredibly talented,” Montaño said of Alvord.

Montaño anticipates a 2017 opening for her new Los Angeles restaurant. In the meantime, she’s planning on traveling, “and getting some sleep.”

Racion, 119 W. Green St., Pasadena, (626) 396-3090, racionrestaurant.com

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