Chef Ben Lefenfeld is no stranger to opening restaurants. But unveiling his latest project, Seppia, a few months after a fire shut down his other eatery, comes with a new type of anxiety.

“It was very numbing and surreal,” the owner said of the January incident.

His first restaurant, La Cuchara, was a melting pot in the Jones Falls area buzzing with family gatherings, business meetings and celebratory dinners. For more than a decade, the Basque eatery inside an 8,000-square-foot wooden warehouse on Clipper Mill Road served a range of dishes from classic Spanish tapas to hulking, 46-ounce ribeyes. The place was vibrant and rustic with cuisine Lefenfeld describes as “grandmotherly.”

Sunday dinner service had just begun on Jan. 4 when the flames broke out. Lefenfeld ran from his home down the street to the restaurant, emptying two fire extinguishers into the blaze as firefighters arrived. The sparks burned through La Cuchara’s hood system. It was one of several fires to shutter businesses in the Hampden neighborhood around that time, following one at Falkenhan’s Hardware weeks earlier and another in November at “The Castle.”

There is no set date yet for when the popular spot will reopen. But as Lefenfeld prepares to open Seppia on Thursday in the historic G.C. Murphy Five and Dime building along The Avenue, he hopes to re-create some of the magic that made La Cuchara so hard to miss.

When Lefenfeld first walked into Seppia’s future home at 901 W. 36th St., he felt some of the same electricity that flowed through La Cuchara’s space in the Meadow Mill location years earlier. But the chef and his team, including his wife, Amy, and brother, Jake, knew the Five and Dime building would need significant work.

Lefenfeld purchased the building, which over the years housed antique dealers, a dollar store and the Five and Dime Ale House restaurant, on April 12, 2024. “It’s not a space for beginners,” developer Jeremy Landsman told The Banner when the sale was announced.

The Lefenfelds had never remodeled a building before.

“With any big investment like this you’re going to have second thoughts,” Ben Lefenfeld said.

The chef and owner expected to open Seppia in 2025, but faced construction delays. The building, first erected in 1901, needed sewage updates, graffiti removed and changes run by the Maryland Historic Trust to preserve its historic character. Part of the second floor was demolished in the renovation of the space, which spans more than 12,000 square feet and has 50-foot ceilings.

Now, guests will be greeted by a new staircase and a more open second floor, complete with antique furniture, with room for up to 140 guests. The first floor can seat roughly another 120 people, including at a long marble bar and in nooks that provide a view of The Avenue.

Lefenfeld said insurance payments from the winter fire at La Cuchara helped with the new restaurant’s build-out and assisted employees in the interim. Fans of the staff at the Clipper Mill restaurant can expect to see familiar faces on The Avenue: 40 members of La Cuchara will join the team at Seppia.

Lefenfeld said that along with the rising cost of food and materials like linens, finding and retaining quality workers in the industry has become more difficult. He hopes the new eatery provides an opportunity for longtime workers to grow their professional skills and develop their careers.

General manager Michael Farace said the chance to cultivate a larger, more varied wine program at Seppia than what had existed at La Cuchara, which was mostly Spanish, excited him.

“I fell in love with wine, we had people [at La Cuchara] who made it really accessible and peeled back that curtain,” he said of working at the Lefenfelds’ restaurant for more than a decade.

Now, he’s responsible for a 300-bottle wine list with offerings from Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, France and more.

Seppia‘s menu will focus on seafood and fresh pasta. Dishes from the Mediterranean will include seasonal catches like cuttlefish and fresh calamari — a pricier, hard-to-clean item, but a necessary pursuit for Lefenfeld as he looks to set the restaurant apart in a crowded corridor with more foot traffic.

The tapas dining style beloved by La Cuchara customers will still appear at Seppia, but in the form of a “choose your own adventure” pasta menu, with dishes slightly larger than an appetizer for between $22 and $24.

“This is not a traditional menu,” Lefenfeld said. “We want to be able to provide all these experiences to people.”

Customers can try a burrata plate with multiple garnishes ranging from an olive tapenade to confit tomato and roasted garlic and shallots. Lefenfeld is also proud of the artichoke and spinach lasagna, which comes with a tomato pomodoro sauce underneath. All of the pastas are made fresh in-house. “It has to be eaten in the moment, it’s not just a recipe or a dish that can be mass-produced,” he said.

Lefenfeld compares the art of making pasta to cooking fish on the wood grill at La Cuchara — a minute too long on the flame or left out on the plate and it’s a different dish.

“It’s the magic in the moment,” he said.