Foodies take note. Chef Abe Lopez, who earned a first place finish on Food Network’s “Chopped,” has taken the helm of the kitchen at Sangria, the chic streamlined eatery owned by Easton restaurateur George Meieles, who added Sangria to his collection of boutique restaurants last August.

Lopez joined Sangria in December. However, the New York City native with long list of culinary accolades , moved to the Lehigh Valley to head up Pacifico, Center Valley in 2009, has remained rather quiet, preferring instead, to tweak the menu and flavors at Sangria, all the while garnering feedback from the customers. His method is apparently working.

“I want to slowly test to see how customers react to our new and slightly altered menu items,” Lopez says, noting he is “in a test phase” of adapting Mediterranean flavors and his method of fusion cooking. “Mediterranean foods can be a very different for the typical American palette, and I am working with those flavors in a more delicate way,” he adds.

On a recent Saturday evening, Sangria was packed with a heady dose of customers despite the frigid temps and ice laden streets. A good sign indeed, that Lopez is on track with his fresh take on ingredients, fusion cooking, and strictly homemade menu items, from the foccacia bread made daily, to the stocks used for soups, sauces, even the mayonnaise, all created by hand on the premises.

“It really makes a difference to have everything in the kitchen made by a chef and staff. My mentors would faint if they ever saw anything in a kitchen come from a can or a package,” says Lopez, who may have even surprised even himself, when he won $10,000 on “Chopped” for his ability to conjure a series of tasty, aesthetically pleasingly dishes, from appetizers, to entree and dessert, with only 30 minutes each episode, and a list of bizarre ingredients.

For instance, to ice his win on “Chopped,” Lopez used raw culinary instinct to out bake a French pastry chef with a last minute creation using caramels, stout and pie crust provided to the two remaining contestants.

At Sangria, Lopez is placing greater emphasis on daily specials based on availability and season. Recently, he tested Bronzini, a Mediterranean trout-like fish, served traditionally with head intact, and a glaze of citrus zest. To Lopez’s surprise, only two customers asked for the head to be removed, a sign of certain sophistication among diners in the Valley, he says.

Lopez, is a chef’s chef, or in other words, has trained and worked in rigorous culinary settings, schooled in French classic cooking in New York City, then working up the ranks at the bustling Aqua Grille, in Manhattan’s SoHo district, where he spent a nine year stint, eventually earning second in command.

In 2010, after “Chopped,” Lopez helped launch a tapas bar, Poco in Lower Manhattan as executive chef.

At Sangria, Lopez has brought in a number of tapas like foods including his signature and very delicious fish taco, in addition to six mini tacos, to chicken satay and new entrée selections, including chicken tangine with couscous style risotto.

For all of his accolades, the 34 year old Lopez remains not only affable during a recent interview, but like a wondrous child where the kitchen will always serve as a wonderland of flavors and technique. It is a demeanor he certainly displayed in the last 10 minutes of “Chopped,” when he was still not quite certain, to the shock of the judges he eventually won over, of how he would finish his prize winning dessert.