Calle 75 Street Tacos will open a Downtown Boise restaurant on 11th Street in August
Calle 75 Street Tacos is the latest food business to jump from wheels to bricks.
Owners Rosie and Mike Weems signed a lease for the former Golden Phoenix Oriental Express spot at 110 N. 11th St. in Downtown Boise, across the street from The Record Exchange and Neurolux.
“There feels like there’s a real synergy in this part of Downtown,” Mike Weems says.
The building has been empty since Oriental Express closed at the end of 2013. Weems wants to have the restaurant up and running by the end of summer, he says.
“We need a bigger kitchen to handle all of our catering, the market, events and concerts we do,” Weems says.
Having a sit-down place with a larger kitchen will allow the Weemses and chef Tito de la Garza to expand their offerings. Garza will make their own artisan corn tortillas daily with house-made masa that is made from fresh Mexican heirloom corn with a volcanic stone corn grinder.
The restaurant also will open a walk-up window to serve the late-night crowd.
He also would like to develop a future relationship with Garden City-based brewery Barbarian Brewing, which is opening a tap room later this spring just around the corner on Main Street in the The Crux coffeehouse’s former space.
Calle 75 serves a delicious array of street-style tacos, burritos and tortas (sandwiches) for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Mike and Rosie Weems started making tacos in 2008 with recipes from Rosie’s father, who learned the art of street tacos in Southern California.
“We started serving them at parties and, a few years later, started doing farmers markets,” Rosie says.
They made their business mobile with two grills and coolers the couple would haul around by trailer. By 2011, they had started making regular trips to Boise. They moved here permanently in 2012 with the idea to expand to brick-and-mortar restaurants.
Calle (street in Spanish) opened a small sit-down operation in The Village at Meridian’s open-air food court in 2014.
No worries, the truck won’t go away, Mike Weems says, although they’ve become more selective about when and where they go out. You’ll see them at events such as the concerts at Idaho Botanical Garden’s Outlaw Field, the Capital City Public Market on Saturdays through the summer and popular events like Treefort Music Fest.
They also will continue the spot at The Village at Meridian.
This story was originally published April 17, 2017 at 1:57 PM with the headline "Calle 75 Street Tacos will open a Downtown Boise restaurant on 11th Street in August."