Tacos Tacos Tacos will open this spring within walking distance of downtown St. Paul's biggest event venue, Xcel Energy Center.
Owner Robert Giuliani, who opened the first Tacos Tacos Tacos in Duluth, has been on the hunt for the perfect place to open his street taco restaurant when this spot — at 241 W. 7th St. — became available.
Giuliani said the initial Duluth restaurant, on Superior Street, was more or less a test run. That location is closed — it will return later this year with a new address — but the test was successful enough that he has designs on not only the St. Paul location, but several more throughout the metro area — and a food truck.
Growing up in Duluth, Mexican cuisine was limited to Chi-Chi's or Taco John's. When Giuliani would travel to Mexico with his mother to her home in León, Guanajuato, he experienced an entirely different cuisine. There were tender corn tortillas with distinctive flavor from the nixtamalization of the corn, charred crispy meats and vendors with giant knives that could fling an onion or slice of pineapple directly from the spit onto a waiting bed of al pastor.
"The smell, the visual of those experiences, the people cooking right in front of you and having it come up so fast. The taste of a street taco brings me right back to being a kid," said Giuliani, who was traveling in Mexico when he spoke to the Star Tribune. "I became a chef because of that. I went to the Art Institute in Minneapolis, the Culinary Institute of America, worked for chefs in California and opened Clyde Iron Works with my brother."
But through it all, he always traveled and always went back to Mexico.
"My mom was by far the best chef/instructor," he said.
Tacos Tacos Tacos will be a straight up taqueria. "No rice and beans — no fish or chicken," he said. Simple classics like al pastor (marinated and spit-roasted pork), arrachera, lengua, carnitas, chorizo and more. Eventually there will be a few stools for seating, but the majority of the food will be order and go.
Tacos Tacos Tacos initially will be open for lunch and dinner Tuesday through Saturday, with later hours to accommodate post-show or game munchies for fans leaving downtown coming down the road.
Look for an opening in the next few months, with the food truck launching soon after that.
