RESTAURANT NEWS | NEW YORK
Efrén Hernández Opens Pez in Hudson
The three-time James Beard semifinalist replaces Rivertown Lodge Tavern with a coastal Mexican restaurant.
PEZ | MAP | INSTAGRAM
By Eric Barton
6:35 a.m. ET, June 22, 2026
AUTHOR BIO: Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who has reviewed restaurants for more than two decades. Email him here.
Efrén Hernández didn’t arrive at Rivertown Lodge as the chef of a Mexican seafood restaurant. He got there in 2020, took over its tavern, and spent the next six years building the kind of following that generally persuades a restaurant to keep doing exactly what it’s doing.
Then Hernández closed it.
In its place, he has opened Pez, a coastal Mexican restaurant that gives him a chance to cook the mariscos he has wanted to serve for years. Pez debuted June 18 inside the hotel on Warren Street in Hudson, following the end of Rivertown Lodge Tavern’s 10-year run.
Clams with criolla tatemada
Hernández is also the chef behind Casa Susanna, the modern Mexican restaurant at Camptown in nearby Leeds. His work there has earned him three James Beard Award semifinalist nods for Best Chef: New York State, along with spots for both Hernández and Casa Susanna on Esquire’s best-new-restaurant lists.
At Pez, Hernández’s menu looks to the Mexican coasts and the waters closer to Hudson. The restaurant uses East Coast seafood and Hudson Valley produce for dishes including hay-smoked black bass aguachile, grilled Maine lobster with fava beans and chile morita, and a Chesapeake Bay crab tostada with asparagus, chintextle, and chicatana ants.
Grilled lobster with chile morita
The ants will likely get attention. So will the Atlantic bluefin tuna with black garlic and bone-marrow salsa macha. But the more interesting part of Pez is how Hernández translates mariscos through ingredients pulled from the other side of the country. A whole dry-aged Atlantic mackerel comes with pipián rojo, escabeche, and burnt-strawberry salsa. Dayboat scallops get chipotle and seaweed butter.
Mussels chileatole negro
The Pez dining room
Pez reunites Hernández with Rivertown Lodge owners Kim Bucci and Ray Pirkle, his partners at Casa Susanna. They considered keeping the tavern, a reasonable instinct when a restaurant has lasted a decade. Instead, they cleared the way for Hernández to open the restaurant he wanted.
Hudson now gets the lobster. And the ants.
Cameron Rolka and Sarah Welch opened Umbo, a 25-seat oyster bar in Traverse City.
By MARIA RODRIGUEZ
