It’s hard to argue with tacos and empanadas (and not just because they can’t argue back), so we don’t really have any beef with Nation’s Restaurant News choosing local restaurants Tacos Tequila Whiskey and Maria Empanada as two of their .
According to the site — which, as the name implies, covers the nation’s restaurant news — these eight emerging restaurants “are stirring the pot” and are about to strike it big. (Punch Bowl Social and Dog Haus are previous honorees.)
Lorena Cantarovici, who started Maria Empanada as a recent immigrant from Buenos Aires in 2010, scored $3.5 million in funding last year from the Colorado Impact Fund, a local venture capital firm. She plans to use the money to continue her empanada world domination plan, which is going pretty well considering she started by selling empanadas out of her garage.
Currently, there are three Maria Empanada locations — on South Broadway, at the Denver Tech Center’s Belleview Promenade, and inside the Stanley Marketplace — and the little pockets of Argentinean goodness are also available at select markets and coffee shops around town.
Kevin Morrison first rolled out Tacos Tequila Whiskey as a food truck in 2010 (then known as Pinche Taqueria), and now he has four brick-and-mortar locations — three in Denver and one in Phoenix. In spite of the title of the list, Morrison said that TTW will not be doing much breaking out in 2018, but that future expansion plans are a possibility.
“We do want to grow; however, we will grow when our management team is ready. We opened three restaurants in 15 months — that was a great experience for all of us,” he said.
Maria Empanada: various locations;
Tacos Tequila Whiskey: various locations;