Chef Julian Lopez-Kelly’s fascination with food started in the jungles of Chiapas.
He was just a kid in a family of Oaxacan coffee ranchers. After playing kickball on the Mexican coffee plantation with his cousins, Lopez-Kelly would steal into the kitchen of his grandfather’s home and watch as cooks turned chiles and chocolate into pots of glistening mole negro. He was amazed.
“They had a jar filled with little balls of the chocolate,” recalls the chef, who is Mexican-American. “I was always sneaking my hand in there when they weren’t looking.”
Lopez-Kelly has reimagined those flavors of home at Molli Restaurant & Lounge, a new fine dining restaurant that opened this week in Concord’s Todos Santos Plaza. Located inside the former Agave Grill at 1935 Galindo St., Molli is inspired by Lopez-Kelly’s buzzy pop-up of the same name. The focus is on global dishes cooked through the lens of Oaxacan cuisine. Expect dinner Thursday through Sunday to start, with plans to add breakfast and brunch soon.
The restaurant is still owned by Agave proprietor Reyes Ramos, but Lopez-Kelly runs the kitchen. And the bar program. And makes every dessert. And shops daily for fresh ingredients — only in Concord. Most executive chefs have a team, but Lopez-Kelly does it all. And that’s after wrapping up his day job as manager of Concord’s Crepe La Fontaine, which is owned by his good friend Sam Kheriji, also owner of Walnut Creek’s Brioche de Paris.
“I’ve always worked two jobs,” says the 36-year-old, who spent years as a high school teacher by day. “I just need one day a week where I don’t come in until noon, so I can do laundry and stuff. A lot of my teaching colleagues could not fathom working nights and teaching but having a second job has always really focused me.”
His previous experience includes stints at Dia Y Noche and Teleferic Barcelona, both in Walnut Creek, and Puesto in Concord, where he was a bartender. But it was at his most recent gig, the six-month pop-up at Concord’s La Fritanguera, where Lopez-Kelly gained a following for his unique presentations of mole — dressing pasta, for instance, or egg rolls — as well as pizzabirria.
“It’s cheese and birria meat served on a large tortilla, like a pizza, accompanied with broth for dipping,” he says. “My birria is something I’ve cultivated over the years.”
Those dishes are on the menu alongside ribeye steaks that Lopez-Kelly ages for up to 60 days, duck magret served with whipped purple potatoes and blueberry hibiscus sauce and tobacco-infused tres leches ice cream served with palate-balancing prickly pear sorbet.
“I always had this idea of doing high-end dining, something different that doesn’t really exist in Concord,” he says.
Is Concord ready? Lopez-Kelly is confident that his dishes are approachable. Entrees do fetch up to $38 (that generous duck breast, served alongside a confit leg), but that is not uncommon in neighboring cities like Walnut Creek and Lafayette. And there are plenty of wallet-friendly options, including a rotating selection of street tacos: Guajillo prawns with cilantro lime slaw and chile de arbol aioli; marinated skirt steak with chimichurri, blueberry hibiscus sauce and queso; and pollo pibil, Yucatan-style marinated chicken with pickled red onions.
What appeals to him most about cooking is marrying flavors from different cuisines, or bringing a fresh perspective to a dish, like manchamanteles, a deep red Oaxacan mole that the chef serves alongside grilled pineapple, plaintains and a bone-in pork chop instead of having those elements mixed in a traditional stew.
“The kitchen is a blank canvas where you can do anything,” he says.
Lopez-Kelly moved to the United States for high school, settling in New Hampshire, and working as a restaurant dishwasher at 14. He attended college in New York, where he studied international business while working for an “old-school French chef” in a small bistro.
After graduate school — Lopez-Kelly holds a masters degree in economics and literary theory — he moved back to Mexico, where he opened a small bar and restaurant. He decided to move back to the United States after the birth of his daughter, teaching Spanish language and literature at a boarding school in Pennsylvania, where he often cooked for students.
“A lot of the kids were international and many were homesick, so they’d show up at my door with a steak or other ingredients and ask me to make them something,” he recalls.
A teaching job at Carondelet High School lured Lopez-Kelly to the Bay Area. A few years later at his pandemic pop-up, he was approached about making Molli permanent.
“We made it a little bit of a partnership,” he says. “I’m excited to see where it goes.”
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