1. It’s a winery … It’s a restaurant … It’s a market … No, wait, it’s all three.

LeoFigs is primarily a restaurant, but far from “just” – the space has a functioning winery as well as a small market and dining upstairs.

The winery is in the basement, but this is not your cousin’s home brew project. Figueras has utilized his experience in the industry to craft a state-of-the-art facility, complete with a from-scratch renovation. Figueras has been accepted into a masters of wine program, which he says has informed many of his decisions at LeoFigs.

“We’re not just throwing things down in the basement. We’re crafting wines that I believe a master of wine would be proud of,” he says.

They’ll be selling the bottles upstairs, both to restaurant guests and at the second feature of the space — the marketplace. The market will sell goods from friends of the couple and local businesses, like Blue Moon olive oils and vinegars, Reckless Town honey, and Tawes Creek soap, as well as wine and hard cider from LeoFigs, plus gift baskets and other goods.

“A lot of our friends have businesses here, and we feel like [this] was a good opportunity to showcase [them],” Figueras says.

The main draw, though, will be the upstairs restaurant.

“We want the community to join us with the expectation that it’s more of a restaurant and bar. You can have a special night [here], with small plates and shareables, or with a special three-course dinner,” Figueras says.

2. Fresh pasta, fresh bread, and fresh flavors are on the menu.

The menu, overseen by chef Nate Bayletts, takes inspiration from the heritage and background of Leocata Figueras, whose family is from Biancavilla, Sicily, and holds several prestigious awards for their culinary skills in pizza and confections, in addition to running a thriving catering company. In practice, this looks like housemade pasta alongside dishes like applewood-smoked mushroom pâté, duck confit mounted with wine lees, and sage-crusted prime rib with pomegranate polenta.

LeoFigs also plans to have a fresh bread program, making as many of the baked goods as they can in-house, including daily sourdough focaccia and brioche from their in-house baker.

If there were a definitive thread to be found throughout the menu, however, it would be fermentation, from the slow-leavened breads and wine vinegars to wine lees reductions and lacto-fermented cocktail garnishes.

3. Figueras is right at home in the wine cellar downstairs.

The pair didn’t go into the journey to start LeoFigs with the intention of starting a winery.

“We started looking through liquor licenses and at the price they were, it wasn’t in our realm of possibility. I have a wine background, and Shannon was searching through liquor laws and saw that if we made wine we could get a license and serve Pennsylvania products for around $800 instead of the $200,000 we had been looking at before,” Figueras remembers.

Even so, it’s not a surprise that he would excel, Leocata Figueras says.

“I think I’ve always known that Justice was incredibly talented when it came to his level of knowledge, and he’s had the privilege of working with so many winemakers over his years in the industry. He was always, for lack of a better term, geeking out with them,” she laughs.

They’ve sourced grapes from California, the Finger Lakes (where they have their own rows of riesling and cabernet franc in partnership with Apollo’s Praise Winery), Chile, and South Africa. Future vintages will also be made with grapes sourced from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, too. The only wines on the menu, for the moment, are made in-house, with around 14 different varieties on offer. As they prepare the restaurant, the winery downstairs has been operational for close to two years already.

“That’s one of the challenges we’ve really had. To open a winery, you’ve gotta make wine first,” Figueras laughs, adding that it takes at least a year to make something. They’ve intentionally kept things fun and approachable.

“Everybody’s been chatting about how new generations aren’t drinking as much and have really pulled away from wine,” Figueras says. “I think it’s the wine industry’s fault. We’ve made it too pretentious and too challenging. But it doesn’t need to be.”

Leocata Figueras, who currently works for Bacardi as a director of events, says that the cocktail program will be just as thoughtful. Their list will be “small but mighty,” she says, including the “coldest martini ever served” and the pièce de résistance, housemade wine coolers with grown-up ingredients like grapefruit cordial and jalapeños. They’ll also serve mocktails, fresh juices, and housemade sodas. Expect to see shared ingredients among the food and beverage menus, too.

4. It’s quirky and colorful inside.

The pair says they never imagined that the space they finally chose for their restaurant would be as big as it is, but they’re taking full advantage. Leocata Figueras’ friend Coralie Sleap, a London-based designer behind Drink Shop & Do, helped them realize their vision of a quirky, colorful, vintage interior.

“We’ve seen a lot of new builds in this neighborhood, and they’ve always, from a design perspective, been really safe. We wanted to go big,” Leocata Figueras says.

The walls are washed with their own lime wash (three to four coats, they laugh), and the floors are bright teal epoxy with an oversized black-and-white checkerboard pattern. The 30-foot-long bar is copper and seats 15. There’s a stage that doubles as the private dining room, with plush wraparound curtains that encircle it when in use. When a nearby church closed down a couple years ago, the couple bought most of their wooden pews with the intention of using them in a restaurant one day.

“All of our booths are church pews. We also repurposed the wood into the shelves in the marketplace and for some of the back bar features,” Leocata Figueras says.

5. The end result is a labor of love and community.

The pair has called upon a vast network of friends and other industry comrades to help them realize their vision. They’ve lived in Fishtown since 2018, just two blocks away from LeoFigs, and have built a community that is now on full display.

For example, the carpenter who made the arches on the back bar is the father of one of their son’s jiu-jitsu friends. Stories like this are sprinkled throughout the couple’s description of the restaurant and how it came to be, which has led to a fierce desire to be essential to their neighborhood.

They plan to host “Just Juice” (a play on Justice) wine classes, and live music in the space.

“Making people feel comfortable is sort of like our most important core value. First and foremost [we want] to be a part of the drumbeat of this neighborhood,” Leocata Figueras says.

LeoFigs will initially be open from Wednesday to Saturday from 4 to 10 p.m. and on Sundays from 1 to 7 p.m.

Ellie Plass is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn. Follow her on Instagram and X.