When Don Kramer was offered the chance to open a restaurant in the landmark Humboldt Park boathouse in early 2002, he had only two years’ experience in the food business. The owner of Puerto Rican restaurant La Palma on nearby Homan Avenue, Kramer had responded to an open solicitation from the Park District, which was finishing up a multimillion-dollar restoration of the boathouse. The Prairie-style open-air pavilion–built in 1907 overlooking the park’s large lagoon and long a neighborhood destination for picnics, concerts, and other public gatherings–received landmark designation in November 1996. By mid-2001 the boathouse deck and docks had been restored and the lagoon dredged, and the Park District decided it wanted to add a food concession to the complex.
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Kramer, a Northbrook resident who runs the Remark Paper Company in Wheeling, bought La Palma four years ago, after a real estate investment brought him into Humboldt Park. “I stopped in for lunch one day and found out the owner was looking to sell and move back to Puerto Rico,” he says. He immediately liked the food and impulsively made the deal. Two years later, when he heard about the Park District’s search, he couldn’t resist the idea of expanding the franchise.
Kramer notes that good Puerto Rican and Dominican food is “highly spiced, but not necessarily spicy.” At La Palma in the Park, the mofongo is no bland dish; instead, this mashed combo of green plantains and pork rinds is nicely garlicky. It’s shaped in a flanlike dome and served with a side of short-rib-size carne frita, thick strips of fried bacon on the bone topped with a half-inch layer of crackling fried fat that Kramer characterizes as “what Lipitor is for.”
