Boise neighborhood restaurant, bar to open a 2nd location downtown. ‘We’d like 5 or 10’

A popular Hyde Park restaurant and bar plans to expand — 5 minutes away.

Parrilla Grill & Cantina, 1512 N. 13th St., will take its concept to downtown Boise. The popular food-and-drink hub will open at 505 W. Idaho St. in the former, short-lived Taziki’s Mediterranean Cafe space.

Owner Scott Graves is hoping for an early summer launch. “That’s our goal,” he says. “Whether we make it or not is kind of irrelevant. We’re shooting for July 1.”

A North End neighborhood institution, Parrilla is known for Tex-Mex fusion food, cheap Tecate beers, a full bar and sports on TVs. There’s also a spacious patio out back.

After 22 years in Hyde Park, Graves says, the moment is right for Parrilla to expand.

“We’d like to have five or 10 around the valley, eventually,” he says. “It was just kind of time.

“... Maybe not just the valley,” he clarifies. “Sun Valley, McCall, Twin (Falls). Who knows?”

Shortly before the pandemic hit in 2020, Graves hired a staffer to begin the process of growing Parrilla into a local chain. Now that COVID-19 has waned, the project is back on track, he says. There are no specific new locations planned besides downtown Boise. At least not yet.

“Kind of just my personal goal — it’s not even a business goal — is five by the end of ’24,” Graves says. “... Just kind of what I have in my gut, what I’d like to try to do.”

The downtown Parrilla will have the same concept as the Hyde Park original, including liquor, Graves says. The new restaurant will have a smaller bar and patio, but a much larger kitchen. That will be used as a commissary for Hyde Park. “That’s our goal,” Graves says. “That’s the real appeal, that we’re able to do that.”

Being only 1.4 miles apart, it should be easy to prep and transport food for Parrilla’s menu of wraps, tacos and burritos. But the two restaurants’ close proximity also creates the potential for crossover customers. “We’re a little concerned about cannibalization,” Graves admits. “But we really think downtown is its own entity, and so is Hyde Park.”

Plus, while Parrilla in Hyde Park is dinner-driven, Graves says, he thinks downtown’s business will be more evenly balanced.

“We really think the breakfast-lunch crowd should be much bigger downtown,” he says.

Most Boiseans won’t remember it, but Parrilla’s first Boise location opened at 477 N. Milwaukee St. in 1999. Months later in 2000, it moved to its Hyde Park spot. Over the decades, a few Parrilla restaurants have operated in other states, including currently in Bend, Oregon, and in Bozeman, Montana (called LaPa Grill). “Not a chain,” Graves says. “Just similar concepts.”

All these years later, Parrilla Grill & Cantina, the Boise-known brand, is ready to get cooking in Idaho.

“It’ll be an adventure all right,” Graves says.

This story was originally published May 11, 2022 at 4:00 AM.