Order Up! Mexico Authentico

Holy guacamole, the region’s prayers for more authentic ethnic eats are about to be answered – twice.

First up: Miguel Osorio – the Mexican food maestro whose former eatery Taqueria Margarita made a follower of even famed chef Mario Batali – is giving the restaurant business another go.

He and his wife, Karla Osorio-Franco, are opening Osorio’s Tacos and Salsas in Acme, on the northwest corner of the US-31 and M-72 intersection.

Target opening date: May 5, Cinco de Mayo.

Osorio tells The Ticker that the new menu will retain many of Taqueria’s authentic Oaxacan-style staples: homemade tacos, tamales, hand-mashed refried beans and hangover soup, check.

But new are the additions of Baja-born Karla’s authentic fish tacos – and 12 of Osorio’s 100-percent homemade salsas.

“Before, I didn’t focus too much on the salsas because it takes a whole day of boiling, roasting, cooking. I follow the recipe of my grandmother. And it’s a lot of physical work,” he says. “But it is worth it to see the faces of people eating my salsa.”

Now equipped with a bigger kitchen and the help of his wife, niece and nephew, Osorio plans to bolster the restaurant business by bottling his salsas and Karla’s homemade enchilada sauce.

Already he’s got a dozen accounts around the area – among them, Oryana, Maxbauer and Union Cantina. “I am doing wholesale so I don’t have to just depend on selling my tacos,” he says.

But he adds that he’s in no rush to tackle too much too soon. He’s closed his South Airport grocery store, Osorio el Mexicano, and says he wants to focus only on making food – for the new restaurant and his wholesale accounts.

“I want to take my time,” he says. “We closed [Taqueria Margarita] more than two years ago, and so many people wanted, wanted, wanted. It’s nice to know. But I cannot please all the people. So I tell my family, OK. The economy is hurting, but let’s go. We can do some dishes. Later, maybe more.”

TC Takeout
Just a dozen miles away, at the corner of Zimmerman and Silver Lake roads in Traverse City, another Mexican restaurant is opening: Taqueria TC Latino.

The owners behind the restaurant: husband and wife team Adolfo Mendez and Sandra Rios, owners of Mexican market, TC Latino, at 1456 South Airport Road.

Mendez tells The Ticker a Mexican-born friend of his, who works on the farms but wanted to do something different, inspired him. 

“He made for me a very good dish – ‘Oh my God,’ we said. ‘Yes! You don’t want to work for only the farmers, help me open the taqueria!’”

The space, briefly home to Rusty’s Pizza and Subs in 2010 but long remembered as the old Green Hill Grocery store, is small – just a couple tables and a little bar, says Mendez. But it suits their menu, which will be primed for take-out: tamales, quesadillas, burritos, tacos – “all good, homemade, fresh.”

Mendez hopes to open in the next week or two, but the hours aren’t decided yet: “Maybe 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., definitely seven days a week. But it depends. If it’s summertime, we see customers coming late, maybe we extend it.”